This is a quick one. In the most recent Cotinga there is a short
article on the occurrence of Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) in the
Netherland Antilles. This appears to be a new record for South America, but
unfortunately the published photos in the magazine were extremely poor in
quality. Perhaps to rectify this, Cotinga has put a version of this paper
on their web site with nice photos of the bird in question:

http://www.neotropicalbirdclub.org/feature/cotinga18/westerntanager.html

The photo is published, although unidentifiable in the journal, so this
deserves to be voted on as the first record for this species in South
America unless there are other records out there which I am unaware of.

As the bird is unambiguously a male Western Tanager I am comfortable in
accepting this species to the list, so vote yes on it. The date is a little
odd, but this does not bother me at all.

Alvaro Jaramillo
Biologist
San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory
P.O. Box 247
Alviso, CA 95002
(408)-946-6548
http://www.sfbbo.org/
chucao@attbi.com

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Comments from Schulenberg: "My vote is "Yes". No question of what the bird is (in the photographs on the website, *not* the images that were published!), and I see no reason to doubt that the photographs were taken where the authors said that they were taken."

Comments from Zimmer: "I checked out the photos on the Cotinga website. Clearly a Western Tanager, so please record my "yes" vote for the proposal to add this species to the list. We get adult male Westerns moving through our yard in late June-early July as well, nearly every year. They definitely start moving early."

Comments from Stotz: "Although the published photo is very poor, I actually do think it is identifiable."