This one will make your eyes water when you get him in your binos. Fire engine red, with black wings and silvered lower mandible, this species is a looker. It’s another Southeastern Brazil near-endemic, with a tiny bit of its range extending into far northwestern Argentina. The female, by comparison, is relatively drab.
The female somewhat resembles the Rufous-bellied Thrush, Brazil’s national bird, but the bills are quite different.
This is another species gravely impacted by the near-total destruction of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, but to some extent is has adapted, learning to use a variety of shrubby non-forest habitats, including overgrown clearings, forest borders, parks, gardens, city plazas and edges of swampy woodland and marshes. It’s often near water, as well as in shrubbery close to the ocean. It’s found from the lowlands up to about 800 meters.
There are two recognized subspecies. The range of the Brazilian Tanager is not known to overlap with its somewhat similar looking cogener, the Silver-beaked Tanager. There is some perhaps ambiguous evidence that birds in the southerly, austral winter portion of the species’ range migrate northwards.
Brazilian Tanagers are omnivores and opportunistic feeders, perhaps preferring pulpy fruit when it is available. It rarely joins mixed flocks, foraging instead in pairs or small families. Its call is a delightful and appropriate “jewle-jewle-jewle…” repeated several times. The nest is an open woven cup of grasses, vines and fibres, placed in bush or low tree or hidden among clumps of marsh grass. The clutch is 2–3 eggs, incubated exclusively by the female. The hatchlings are fed by both adults. There’s no published data on fledging. At least anecdotally, the species is among birds most frequently parasitized by Shiny Cowbird.
This is another poorly studied species. IUCN, despite devastating habitat loss, a relatively low reproduction rate and a near-total absence of population data, survival or even range, classifies this as a species of Least Concern. WC fears that’s wishful thinking.
For more bird photographs, please visit WC’s bird photo site, Frozen Feather Images.
Wickersham's Conscience 
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