The Story
I made this photo of a juvenile Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra) at Entreaguas Reserva Natural in Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia. It builds a cup nest on a horizontal tree branch, about 1 to 14 meters off the ground. It mainly eats insects but regularly adds fruit to its diet. It breeds across the southern United States and northern Mexico. It often forages out of sight high in trees, sometimes flying out to catch insects in flight. Entreaguas is one of the civil-society reserves of Ibagué’s nature tourism network, set in premontane humid forest at about 1,050 to 1,300 meters.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, −1 EV. IUCN lists the Summer Tanager as Least Concern, with an increasing population.
©2019 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra) belongs to the family Cardinalidae (Cardinals and Allies) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2025), with the population trend listed as increasing. Source: IUCN Red List