The Hepatic Tanager, a bird lover’s gift that lives in the pine-oak forests, is a songbird that will thrill you with its musical chirps. The Hepatic Tanager lives in the southwestern mountains of the United States and parts of South America. The bird is medium sized, and the male and female are both very distinctive. This unique garden gift that comes in bird form is very gorgeous. The male is red or red-orange. It also has some dark and light gray coloring in places. The female, on the other hand, has a throat and forehead that is yellow or orange-yellow. It also has some olive and gray coloring on its nape, back, crown, and wings.
The Hepatic Tanager hasn’t really been studied that much—only a hundred or so have been banded, and very few of these banded birds have been recovered. What is known is that there are three distinct subspecies: the Hepatic Tanager, the Tooth-billed Tanager, and the Red Tanager. These birds can be found anywhere from the southwestern United States all the way to Argentina. For those of us who live further north, it’s not unheard of to find a Scarlet Tanager, flitting past your birdbath in the spring and fall.
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