Distribution & change
Across forty years, the Scarlet Tanager has quietly reclaimed New York. The first atlas found the species thin in the western Catskills, absent from much of the Adirondack high country, and patchy across the St. Lawrence Valley. Since then, each atlas has filled in more of the map. The third atlas confirms breeding in 3,418 of 5,334 statewide blocks, a 42.1% increase in occupancy since 1985.
Expansion has been strongest in the Tug Hill transition, the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, and the southern tier west of Binghamton. In the Adirondacks, high-elevation blocks previously dominated by spruce have added tanager records as mature hardwood stands matured after late-twentieth-century regrowth.
The northern edge of the tanager's range has moved about sixty kilometers upslope since 1985. Whether the bird is chasing warming, chasing forest, or both, is an open question that the species accounts on this site do not yet resolve.
Habitat
Large, contiguous blocks of deciduous and mixed forest — especially mature stands with an open understory — continue to define New York breeding habitat. Atlas III records cluster in blocks with greater than 60% canopy cover, though small numbers were logged in suburban forest fragments along the Mohawk Valley for the first time.
Breeding phenology
Conservation
Listed as least concern by the IUCN, and not tracked as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in New York. Long-term regional trends remain positive, though the species depends on mature, unbroken forest and is sensitive to nest parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds in fragmented edges.
Data & citation
Citation. Hart, J., et al. 2028. Scarlet Tanager Piranga olivacea. In: The Third Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
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