Scarlet Tanager
Tanagers / Tangaras
Like the Eastern Wood-pewee and the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea) also migrate deep into South America, settling down for the winter in the Andean foothills of Ecuador and Peru. On migration the species occurs throughout Colombia and Central America but where they stopover remains a mystery. In northern Colombia, while there are moderate concentrations of birds in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, there is no evidence for birds stopping over or fattening there, with most birds only capable of short flights of less than 1000 km. The same pattern plays out in Panama and Costa Rica during spring migration, with moderate numbers of birds detected in the Serranía de Talamanca and central Panama but with no clear signal of a prolonged stopover.