The Story
This is a Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra) that I photographed in Manizales, Caldas, Colombia on June 23, 2017. It was formerly placed in the tanager family but is now classified with the cardinals in Cardinalidae. It breeds across the southern United States and northern Mexico and winters in Mexico, Central America and northern South America. Adult males are rose red, while females are orange-yellow below and olive above. Caldas has 837 bird species on record, about 45 percent of the birds of Colombia.
I photographed it with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Summer Tanager as Least Concern with an increasing population, and Manizales keeps forest fragments inside the city, such as the Ecoparque Los Alcázares Arenillo, declared an area of environmental interest in 1995.
©2018 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