The western tanager is one of the most colorful and beautiful birds in the Pacific Northwest. The male's yellow and black body and bright orange head make it easy to identify as it flits through the tops of pine and fir trees. Females are a duller yellow and black, and both males and females are dull olive green and yellow in winter.

Western tanagers consume a wide variety of insects which they eat off of leaves and branches and sometimes out of the air in mid-flight. They also like to eat some fruit and will occasionally visit feeders to eat citrus fruits. Females build loose nests of conifer twigs on the horizontal branches of pine and fir trees and usually produce only one batch of three to five bluish-green eggs each year. Western tanagers are neo-tropical migrants who winter in Mexico and Costa Rica. They arrive in the forests around Leavenworth sometime in late May or early June and some begin to head south as early as July.