Distribution

Vermilion Tanager is resident in the countries of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, where it occupies cloud forests along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from Caquetá in the southeastern Andes of Colombia through eastern Ecuador to Ayacucho, the middle Urubamba, and Cordillera Vilcabamba in south central Peru (Weske 1972, Isler and Isler 1987, Ridgely and Tudor 2009, Robbins et al. 2011). The southernmost observation for this species is a female and male in Urubamba at Zona Reservada Megantoni (Robbins et al. 2011). In correlation to geographic location, the Vermilion Tanager has been recorded from 320-600 m in Colombia, from 1100-1800 m in Ecuador, and from 900-1950 m in Peru (Terborgh and Weske 1975, Parker and Parker 1982, Hilty 2011). It is considered fairly common in the Yapitya region, southeastern Ecuador (Robbins et al. 1987). A well known location for this tanager is the San Rafael Falls in the Romerillos area of Podocarpus National Park (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001). There are no reports of migration for Vermilion Tanager. The center of elevational abundance is in the upper tropical zone (Parker et al. 1996). This species occurs in the following Zoogeographic Regions: Central Andes and Northern Andes (Parker et al. 1996).

Vermilion Tanager is endemic to South America.

Vermilion Tanager occupies humid montane forests and forest borders (Meyer de Schauensee 1964, Hilty and Brown 1986, Schulenberg et al. 2010). Parker et al. (1996) list the primary habitat as montane evergreen forest.

There are no documented changes to the historical geographic distribution of Vermilion Tanager. At one site in southeastern Colombia, its relative abundance in 1998 was assessed as fairly common, and it was observed or caught in about 50% of full field days. This is unlike the results from the same site in 2000, where Vermilion Tanager was classified as uncommon/rare, being caught or observed in < 25% of full field days (Salaman et al. 2007).

None reported.