Tanagers Eating Weird Stuff

I have huge dark Chamaecyparis trees hanging over my north studio windows. This is bad. It cuts my light. Gosh, they were so tiny when I planted them 30 years ago! Who'd think they'd shoot up to 20' plus, and get so thick and plumy? In desperation to get my view back I have limbed them up, but their bushy tops still cut a ton of light, especially on those dark winter days when the sun seems to set at 3 pm. Good times! 

 One of the good things about having huge dark Chamaecyparis trees hanging over my north studio windows, however, is the intimate look they give me into the lives of birds. They feel safe in those dark trees and they do things most people don’t get to see, right at eye level. It’s my mini canopy walk, I guess. I’m perched on my high drafting chair and they’re a good 12’ off the ground, and I’m looking right into their eyes. One of the more thrilling birds who perched in there was a Cooper's hawk, on April 6, 2023.

                                                                                   

Most are songbirds, though, like this hatch-year female scarlet tanager who just calmly studied me as I looked back through the big lens. She was but a few feet away, and I was moving slowly, as always, so as not to frighten her. Sept. 16, 2024. My Canon is permanently to my left on the drawing table as I write or draw, and I've perfected a very fluid, slow way of hoisting it to my eye.

                  

                                         

The water features, especially the trickling WarblerFall, draw in forest birds like nobody's business, especially during fall migration. Look at this gorgeous young male scarlet tanager molting into his first adult plumage on Sept. 16, 2024. He starts with the lesser coverts and will gradually replace the fresh flight feathers with jet black ones. And by next spring, he'll be replacing those green body feathers with brilliant scarlet ones. 

I like how he looks like he's wearing a cape around his shoulders. 

On Sept. 22, I was shocked to see a young male scarlet tanager eating a brown marmorated stinkbug, which would have to be the most odious mouthful a bird could ingest. But there he was, crunching it down like a toasted almond. 

Maybe a little gag reflex happening here, but the bug went down the hatch. Zow! 

The same day, I was thrilled to bits to see a young male summer tanager come in to drink at the WarblerFall, then perch in the Chamecyparis! Unlike the scarlet, summer tanagers don't breed on my land, though I do have the mix of Virginia pine and deciduous trees they seem to like. 

Summer tanagers are a late summer and fall phenomenon here, and they are almost always hunting hymenopterans when they're here. I've had them catching yellowjackets off the deck railing! 

Summer tanagers have an old folk name of "bee bird"  because they are notorious for staking out beehives and feasting on their occupants, often catching them in air. My old friend Hank had one spend a Connecticut winter at his beehives in Old Lyme, living on honeybees. He was happy to donate bees, but he did offer other foods, hoping to cut the damage. This is where the extra long, strong beak of the summer tanager comes in really handy. It's good to distance your eyes and face from an angry bee, wasp or hornet. 

This young bird was looking for something, and there was plenty of what he was looking for in my yard.

I have mentioned the absolute Jobian plague of yellowjackets that ruled my life and land all summer. I couldn't go anywhere without having to walk through swarms of yellowjackets, which spent the summer coursing low over the ground, looking for prey, and stinging me and Curtis. Curtis was stung nine times, and I was stung four times, and it was a huge drag. Yellowjacket stings hurt for a couple days and then itch for a week or more. I came to loathe those insects, which always seemed to be in between me and what I was trying to do. There were three huge ground nests in my backyard alone. In September, I accidentally mowed over a nest and got two yellowjackets down inside my hiking boots, stinging the blue-eyed crap out of me as I tried to stop the rider mower and slap them out of my socks. That was fun.

So I was thrilled to see the summer tanager chewin' on a yellowjacket in one of my birch trees.

He masticated that thing into a pulp before he swallowed it, stinger first. You want to make really sure the wasp's head is separated from its body before you pass it through your tender esophagus. Just looking at this photo hurts me, but that bird certainly knows what he's doing. Anyway, my theory as to why summer tanagers have evolved that big honkin' beak is to help them in their quest for stinging insects--an unexploited resource! They can quickly and safely process a large stinging insect with a long, strong beak. From seeing bees hit my windshield and leave a clear puddle of nectar, I imagine that they are sometimes quite sweet to eat, though I doubt I'll ever find out. 

Score two tanagers and a couple cool sightings of Tanagers Eating Weird Stuff for the WarblerFall!

If you haven't got your plans yet, by all means go to warblerfall.com and join the growing family of folks who know the magic attraction of moving water.

And remember, a WarblerFall makes a fabulous holiday gift. All you have to do is fill in your credit card info, and your recipient's email, and the plans will be emailed to your friend. You'll have to give them a heads up to look for it in their email.

Crazy cool bird sightings will follow! Thanks for your support. 

Arizona Birds, From Small to Mighty

 Sometimes it's kind of nice not to know what to expect. My Sedona birding experience was pure, untroubled by any consult with a field guide whatsoever. Heh. This is how I package my laziness. As purity.
I couldn't make this little fellow anything other than a blue-gray gnatcatcher, though my memory was whispering, "Maybe it's a black-tailed!" Of course I didn't know at the time to look under the tail for white spots (black-tailed) or a big white outer panel (blue-gray). But it sounded like a blue-gray, so I'm going with that. Happy to be corrected here. This is hardly an unequivocal shot, I know.

One of the totally cool things about birding in an unfamiliar place in August is the preponderance of new fledglings, all vocalizing. I'd hear this random chewp or teryew repeated incessently, and think, "Well, if I were back East, I'd say that was a baby grosbeak." Which is how I identified this baby blue grosbeak, by that and the hard metallic chink! his parents were voicing.

 When identifying fledglings, just wait around. A parent will come soon enough and give you the big hint.

The most vociferous of them all were baby tanagers, which I knew were around from their distinctive nasal teryew  call. I thought, "Hmm. That sounds like a baby scarlet. Maybe it's a summer." I'd never been around enough breeding summer tanagers to know their juvenile location call. This is the incessant call they give to tell their parents where to bring the groceries.

So cute, and so awkward, this wing-fluttering summer tanager babe. His bill is stained with blackberries, which were the most easily available things his parents could find with which to stuff him into silence. I'm guessing at his sex from the bright orangey yellow coming in on his breast.

 

His mother was an even olive-yellow, but Dad was already slipping into autumnal patchwork green and tomato-red plumage.

 

I kept hearing a very chickadee-like ser-dee-dee-dee high in the treetops. I was delighted to find it coming from a bridled titmouse. I wasn't expecting that!

 

 I suspect this to be a bird of the year (this year's young) with its rather short crest and dark cheek.

It swung upside down to inspect some insect damage on a rolled, yellowed leaf. That's what titmice and other gleaners do--look for holes and webs and little rolled shelters that caterpillars use for houses.

 

It pecked into the rolled leaf and found something good, probably a caterpillar that had pasted the edges together with silk and lived inside the roll.

Then, to my amusement, the leaf it was pecking at came off in its foot, and the bird clung there for a few moments, holding the leaf like a parrot would, while clinging precariously to another.

 

 "Did I just see what I thought I saw?" I wondered, and reviewing the shots, I had! That was cool. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many young birds learning their trade in the shade of the oak-clad canyon. I was glad to be there. I had tanked up on water and felt better, and I was readying myself for the climb when I greeted two women, older than me, who were headed toward the vortex site. One had an oxygen tank in a bag over her shoulder. I felt a pang of sympathy for someone who had to carry her air supply with her wherever she went. They were from Tulsa, and they were coming here to spread the ashes of a friend at the vortex site. Once again I reflected that this place, Sedona, attracts people for reasons of spirit.

We talked long enough to realize that we had a lot in common. Finally, keeping in mind the building heat and my new friend's oxygen pack, I said, "You'll never believe where I'm parked." I gestured up over the rimrock and said I'd be climbing it to get to my car. I  told them how I'd found my way down into the park.  "You'll need this," the first gal said, and reached into her pack to put an ice-cold bottle of water in my hand. I refused it, saying they'd be needing it. "We have more. You need this. Take it!" She literally made me take it. I put it to my lips, intending to take just a sip, and drained the entire bottle in one go. Wow. That was so good. It felt like life itself. I went to the hose tap and filled it, and drained that, too. Only on the third fill was I ready to hike back up to my car. I thanked her again and again and we parted. Guardian angels, they were.

When I got to the top of Slick Rock again, there was someone waiting for me. A turkey vulture swooped silently in, very close.

Again and again it passed by me, legs dangling in the hot air, taking me in as I was drinking it in. "You are such a fine bird," I said. "You're my totem bird. Thank you for coming to see me. Do you think you could fly over by the big rock so I could make a picture that shows where you and I are?"

But of course.  The bird turned and took off for Cathedral Rock.

Then it circled back.

I was left with an enduring image of its guardian spirit, watching over me as I fumbled my way through its desert home, heading back to my car.

#71 for the Bird Spa List!!

Scarlet tanager is the one we see lots in our yard, sometimes right out the studio window. We get gobs of young scarlets blowing through in late summer and fall. Nearly all are in dull plumage, but they are beautiful nonetheless, and it's such fun to see them sport and play.

And then this character appeared. Now, when you see dozens of scarlet tanagers, the little things that are different about this bird jump out at you. First, it's larger. A different green, tinged orange. Longer wings, longer tail...less contrast between wing and body than a scarlet shows. Tail's not blackish like a scarlet's, either. It's all adding up to...just missing one part...

Ah! the Jimmy Durante nose! It's a juvenile summer tanager!

Well, look at you, looking at me!! You're makin' my day here, darling. Keep it up.

Umm.. would you consider a quick dip, getting yourself on the Spa List of species who've bathed or drunk at my special bird bath?

I'll think about it. After all, that's what brought me in, that googurling water.

That goldfinch certainly seems to be enjoying himself. Doesn't seem afraid of the bubbler, either.

And neither is the titmouse...

Don't mind if I do.

Dingdingdingdingding!! #71 for the Spa List!! Summer tanager, August 1, 2012. 

What are we, chopped liver? Anyone have a guess on the brown bird in the middle? Just a little quiz. You knew there'd be a quiz.