These Tanagers breed at least as far to the south as Arizona, Dr. Coues having found them a summer resident near Fort Whipple, though rare. They arrive there in the middle of April, and leave late in September.
Mr. Salvin states that this Tanager was found between the volcanoes of Agua and Fuego, at an elevation of about five thousand feet. Specimens were also received from the Vera Paz.
Specimens of this species were taken near Oaxaca, Mexico, by Mr. Boucard, where they are winter residents.
Mr. Ridgway writes that he first met with these Tanagers in July, among the pines of the Sierra Nevada. There its sweet song first attracted his
attention, it being almost exactly similar to that of its eastern relative (P. rubra). Afterwards he continually met with it in wooded portions, whether among the willows and cotton wood of the river-valleys, or the cedars and piñons of the mountains. In May, 1868, among the willows and buffalo-berry thickets of the Truckee Valley, near Pyramid Lake, it was very abundant, in company with Grosbeaks and Orioles, feeding upon the buds of the grease-wood (Obione), and later in the summer among the cedars and nut-pines of East Humboldt Mountains, where the peculiar notes of the young arrested his attention, resembling the complaining notes of the Bluebird, but louder and more distinct. In September he noticed them feeding, among the thickets bordering the streams, upon the pulpy fruit of the thorn-apple (Cratægus) that grew plentifully in the thickets. To the eastward it was continually met with, in all wooded portions, as far as they explored.
In manners, it is very similar to the P. rubra. The songs of both birds are very nearly alike, being equally fine, but that of this species is more silvery in tone, and uttered more falteringly. Its usual note of plit-it is quite different from the chip-a-ra´-ree of the P. rubra.
He met with their nest and eggs at Parley’s Park, Utah, June 9, 1869. The nest was on the extreme end of a horizontal branch of a pine, in a grove, flat, and with only a very slight depression, having a diameter of four and a half inches, with a height of only an inch. It was composed externally of only a few twigs and dry wiry stems, and lined almost entirely with fine vegetable rootlets.
The eggs, usually three in number, measure .95 by .66 of an inch. In form they are a rounded-oval. Their ground-color is a light bluish-green, sparingly speckled, chiefly at the larger end, with marking of umber, intermingled with a few dots of lilac.
Pyranga hepatica, Swainson.
Pyranga hepatica, Swainson, Phil. Mag. I, 1827, 124.—Sclater, Pr. Zoöl. Soc. 1856, 124.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 302, pl. xxxi.—Kennerly, 131.—Ridgway, Pr. A. N. S. 1869, 132.—Cooper, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 144. Phœicosoma hepatica, Cab. Mus. Hein. 1851, 25. Pyranga azaræ, Woodhouse, Sitgreave’s Expl. Zuñi, 1853, 82 (not of other authors).