Return of the Bird of the Week: Flame-colored Tanager

Don’t confuse the Flame-coloredTanager with the Flame-crested Tanagerfeatured a couple of weeks ago. Yes, the names are confusingly similar, but the birds certainly are not. The male is to the left; the badly out-of-focus bird to the right is the female. This tanager is different from the last sixteen or so in a couple of ways. First, this is the first tanager that sometimes occurs in the United States. It’s rare, but it has been seen several times in southern Arizona and west Texas. The regular range is northern Mexico to western Panama. The second difference is that ornithologists are unsure…