Flame-rumped Tanager

The flame-rumped tanager is about 18 cm (7 in) long; subspecies R. f. icteronotus weighs 29.6 to 35.6 g (1.0 to 1.3 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Males of the nominate subspecies are almost entirely deep black. Their head is velvety with a plush appearance. Their lower back, rump, and undertail coverts are shiny flame-scarlet. Adult females have a blackish brown to brown head with sometimes some dusky and gray on the face. Their back is also blackish brown and usually has some mottling. Their rump and uppertail coverts are reddish orange. Their throat is dingy grayish yellow, their breast pale yellow with diffuse reddish orange across it, their belly pure pale yellow, and their undertail coverts dull red or a mix of red and yellow. Males of subspecies R. f. icteronotus are shiny lemon-yellow where the nominate is scarlet. Females have a grayish brown head and back, sometimes with an olive tinge on the latter. Their lower back, rump, and uppertail coverts are pale yellow. Their throat is dull whitish that becomes pale yellow on the rest of the underparts. Both sexes of both subspecies have a crimson to dark maroon iris, a light blue-gray bill with a black tip, and dark horn-gray legs. Immature males of both subspecies resemble adult females.

Subspecies R. f. icteronotus has by far the larger range of the two. It is found in Panama on the Caribbean slope from Bocas del Toro Province east to Veraguas Province and then across the width of the rest of the country into northwestern Colombia. In Colombia it is found from the northern base of the Western Andes east across the lower valleys of the Cauca and Magdalena rivers and south on the western slope of the Eastern Andes into Santander Department. Its range also continues along the western slope of the Western Andes into Ecuador. In Ecuador it is found from the Pacific to the Andean foothills south to Santa Elena Province and then only in the foothills south through El Oro and Loja provinces. From Ecuador it continues very slightly into extreme northwestern Peru's Tumbes Department. The nominate subspecies R. f. flammigerus has a relatively restricted range in Colombia. There it is found primarily in the Cauca River valley from central Antioquia Department south to Cauca Department. The river separates the Western and Central Andes and the bird is found along both slopes. Its range also includes the western slope of the Eastern Andes above the Magdalena River in Santander. The two subspecies hybridize where their ranges overlap. The flame-rumped tanager inhabits "Tropical Lowland Evergreen Forest Edge, Secondary Forest, [and] Second-growth Scrub" [capitals in original]. …

Both subspecies of the flame-rumped tanager feed on fruit and arthropods. The widespread subspecies R. f. icteronotus forages in pairs, family groups, and in larger groups that may number six or more individuals. The groups are noisy, spending "most of the time in fussing and calling from thickets and shrubbery or in visiting small fruiting shrubs and trees". It takes berries while perched. It takes about half of its insect prey in mid-air with sallies from a perch and picks the rest from foliage and grass. Subspecies R. f. flammigerus is seen mostly singly and in pairs and less often in family groups, and it apparently does not form the larger noisy groups that icteronotus does; otherwise their feeding techniques are essentially the same.