Spring Migration | Summer Tanager

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.

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.

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.