Outdoors

Spring Migration | Summer Tanager

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In Florida, at our house in Sunrise, every summer a spot breasted oriole came to visit the neighborhood for about a month. I looked forward to his visit during the four years we lived there, knowing that when he/she/it came back the second time that it would come back in subsequent years, and it did. Now, I doubt it was the same bird, but just knowing that we were on the migration route was cool.

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Now it seems we’re on another migration route so we get to see different bird species. We have a lot of year-round cardinals and when we saw this red bird on Saturday afternoon I dismissed it at first as a cardinal. Chris did a double take and said it was a summer tanager, a bird I hadn’t seen before. My camera was handy so out it came for a few photos.

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Cornell has their summer breeding range within our area, however I doubt they will stay here through the summer. Chris and I saw scarlet tanagers on our AT hike, mostly through Pennsylvania if I recall, so I was familiar with them. I had to look up the bird before deciding it was definitely a summer tanager and once I did that I noted that the females are yellow. So yesterday while eating dinner I noticed a fairly bright yellow bird fly toward the crepe myrtle in the backyard and decided it was probably the female. We tried to chase them down again but with no luck.

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They are stunning birds!

One Comment

  • Moosie

    Oh beautiful! Just beautiful! I would love to hold him. Tell him how awesome he is.you really do have some awesome birds down there.

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