Before I left for Panama I wondered, Would I see any new tanagers there?  I’d been to Costa Rica all the way to the Panama border so surely every tanager would be the same.  Not so!

60% of all tanagers (Thraupidae) live in South America.  Some of the southern birds have seeped into eastern Panama because it borders Colombia.  Those that prefer South America don’t make it to Costa Rica because the topography and habitat change in western Panama.  Eight of my 97 Life Birds in Panama were tanagers.

Here are just a few of the most colorful tanagers we saw last week.   Some of them occur in Costa Rica and one of them, the bay-headed tanager, was a Life Bird for me last year.

The crimson backed tanager (Ramphocelus dimidiatus), at top, shows a flash of red from below.  His beak stands out because the lower mandible is bright blue-white.  He reminds me of Costa Rica’s Cherrie’s tanager.

In Cerro Azul we saw lots of shining honeycreepers (Cyanerpes lucidus) at the hummingbird feeders.  Check out those bright yellow legs!

Gray-headed tanagers (Eucometis penicillata) are even prettier than this.  Their backs are the color of green olives.

Bay-headed tanagers (Tangara gyrola) are as colorful as painted buntings. I first saw this bird in Costa Rica but he’s worth a second look.

This flame-rumped tanager’s (Ramphocelus flammigerus) yellow color is a regional characteristic in Panama.  He used to be called the lemon-rumped tanager for obvious reasons but he was lumped with flame-rumped tanagers because they interbreed. His Colombian relatives have bright orange-red rumps.

And finally, the white-shouldered tanager (Tachyphonus luctuosus) resembles a red-winged blackbird but his beak shows us he’s not in the blackbird family.

In Panama there are tanagers galore!

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals)

One of the cool things about visiting California in January was seeing hummingbirds in the winter.  On field trips near Chico I saw Anna’s hummingbirds flash their red faces in the sun.

Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) is found year round in many parts of California. The rainy season triggers breeding so they nest from December to May.  Though there’s snow on the mountains in January, the manzanita that blooms at lower elevations attracts these tiny birds.

Often an Anna’s will stake out a bush, watching and waiting to chase off other hummingbirds.  His forehead, face and gorget flash a warning red, “This is mine! Stay away!”

The video from Cornell Lab shows how flashy this hummingbird can be.

(video about iridescence from Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

This tiny bird is the only member of its family (Aegithalidae) in the Americas.  Smaller than a warbler, the bushtit’s closest relatives live in Eurasia.

Bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus) are western birds that tend to stay put, though some move downslope for the winter.  At this time of year they flock like chickadees, flitting, chattering and hanging upside down to glean insects and spiders from the trees.

When I saw them in California my first thought was “brown chickadees.”  This closer look shows why.

In February the flocks break up into pairs and the couples spend four+ weeks weaving a foot-long tubular nest like the one shown below.  With a hooded entrance at the top, it is far larger than one bird needs but is big enough to hold the whole family and their friends on cold nights.

Listen for bushtits calling as they follow each other from tree to tree. (recording of American Bushtit by Kristie Nelson, xeno-canto XC363349)

So tiny!  They are smaller than kinglets.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. Audio from Xeno-Canto XC363349 by Kristie Nelson)

Female house sparrow?  Nope.  When you see her in real life, this bird is way too large to be a house sparrow.  This is a golden-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla) photographed in November in California.

Golden-crowned sparrows breed from Alaska to British Columbia and spend the winter west of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas from southern British Columbia to Baja, Mexico.  At the Snow Goose Festival my location finally matched their range.

Sometimes golden-crowned sparrows hang out with their close relatives, white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) shown below.  I used to think white-crowned sparrows were large but golden-crowned are larger.

Their golden crowns can be subtle at this time of year but the color intensifies as the breeding season approaches.  In spring the male’s head has a bright yellow patch surrounded by black as shown in the Crossley ID Guide below.

I saw these birds for the first time at Bidwell Park in Chico, California (“Life Birds”).  Even the boring ones were wearing faint golden crowns.

(golden-crowned photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. White-crowned sparrow by Chuck Tague)

Here’s a California bird that lives year round in coastal scrub and chaparral.

About the size of a black-capped chickadee, the wrentit (Chamaea fasciata) usually skulks in dense thickets so he’s hard to see.  But this one came out for a drink and Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith captured his acrobatic stretch.

Male and female wrentits sing all year long.  If you hear this song you might find the bird.  (recorded by Michael Lester Xeno-canto #XC312612).

p.s.  Wrentits are uncommon to rare in California’s Central Valley.  You have to go up-slope to find them near Chico.

(photo by Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith via Flickr, Creative Commons license)