What Does a Tanager Look Like?

Video Transcript

"Tanagers are stunning birds. Arguably they are some of the most handsome birds that we have in North America, and possibly even in the world. Because throughout the Americas there are lots of different species of tanagers, and almost all of them are very brightly colored. Here in the eastern United States we have two species, we have one that is completely red in the male. The females in most of them are quite different, and not as handsomely colored. They are sort of an olive green. The scarlet tanager, which is the one we commonly find in New England is bright red, fire engine red with black wings, and a black tail. And all the tanagers have sort of a heavy build. But they like to feed on caterpillars, insects, they are not a seed eating bird particularly, they are relatively sluggish in their foraging behavior. So that if you were to watch a tanager looking for food, and they tend to be canopy species, so they usually behind trees. But they spend a lot of time sort of sitting, and kind of peering, and almost a sort of looking under leaves and things. Because caterpillars are in many cases well camouflaged, they move slowly, but because the tanagers have a fairly heavy build they are good at sort of doing what they have to do to the caterpillars once they catch them. And if they grab one that happens to be one of the hairy caterpillars you will often see it sort of whack it back and forth on a branch, roll it around in it's bill to try to remove as many of the little bristles on a caterpillar as possible before they actually ingest it. So the bottom line is again they are one of these birds that typically feeds on insects, but they really are somewhat of a caterpillar specialist. But then they will take other bugs too. But usually fairly large bugs, because they are a bird that is about this long so they are not looking for little tiny things."