the.com/tanager
a flying paint chip that escaped the catalog and went feral in the canopy
means A small, often brilliantly colored songbird of the Americas, found mostly in forests and famous for the dazzling reds, yellows, and blues of the males.
from From the New Latin Tanagra, which a 17th-century naturalist adapted from tangará, the bird's name in Tupí, a language family of the Brazilian coast and Amazon — so the word still carries an echo of the rainforest it came from.
- color source
- red plumage borrowed straight from eaten insects
- species count
- over 240 kinds, mostly tropical
- travel range
- scarlet ones migrate to the Amazon yearly
- diet shift
- bugs in summer, fruit when winter looms
- taxonomy chaos
- many aren't true tanagers at all
scarlet tanager — bright red north american songbird that migrates between canada and south america annually
summer tanager — all-red tanager species found across southeastern united states and central america
western tanager — yellow and black tanager with red head, ranges from alaska to mexico