Rust-and-yellow Tanager

The rust-and-yellow tanager is 12.5 to 14 cm (4.9 to 5.5 in) long. It weighs 9.6 to 13 g (0.34 to 0.46 oz). It is a small tanager with a slim bill. The species is sexually dimorphic though not dramatically so. Adult males have a mostly bright rufous head. Their nape, upperparts, and upperwing coverts are bright olive-green. Their flight feathers are dusky with bright olive-green edges and their tertials dusky with olive-green outer webs. Their tail is a slightly duller olive-green than the upperparts. Their throat and underparts are bright yellow with an olive tinge on the sides and flanks. Adult females are overall duller than males. They have an olive crown and nape and a rufous-tinged buffy yellow face. Their back is olive and their wings, tail, and underparts are like the male's. Both sexes have a dark brown iris, a dark gray to blackish bill with often a paler and bluer mandible, and horn-gray legs. Immature birds have very little rufous on the face, olive-green upperparts, and yellow underparts.

The rust-and-yellow tanager is found on the eastern slope of the Andes from Junín and Cuzco departments in central Peru south through Puno Department. There are also records of vagrancy further north to Huánuco Department. Its range continues through Bolivia into northwestern Argentina to Tucumán Province. The species inhabits shrubby humid secondary forest, the edges of older forest and cloudforest, and patches of Chusquea bamboo. It sometimes also is found in Polylepis woodlands. In Peru it ranges in elevation between 1,300 and 3,700 m (4,300 and 12,100 ft). It is mostly somewhat below that maximum in Argentina.

The rust-and-yellow tanager's diet has not been studied but it is known to include insects. It forages singly, in pairs, and in family groups and often joins mixed-species feeding flocks. It forages restlessly in low, dense, vegetation. It takes prey from foliage, flowers, and bamboo stalks.