Summer Tanager

This medium-sized tanager favours open woodland, forest edges, and pine-oak habitats, where it forages for bees and wasps in the mid to upper canopy, often removing the stinger before eating them. Males are a striking overall red, while females are more olive-yellow, and both can be located by a robin-like but slower, huskier song from the treetops. Spring and early summer, during the breeding season across the southern and eastern United States and into Mexico, offer the best chance of seeing one before birds head to wintering grounds further south.