Scarlet Tanager, male, way high in a tree next to our house. Whenever we hear him nearby we run and get the binoculars just to get a look at all that scarlet beauty. We stand there and ooh and ahhh. Scarlet Tanagers stay in the tree canopy, not always visible among the leaves, and if you don't know their song you will not know they are there. Some say the song of the Scarlet Tanager sounds like a robin with a hoarse voice.The female is olive yellowish with brown wings and thus more camouflaged, a good thing, as she has to sit on the nest and incubate the eggs. The males sings throughout their breeding period and occasionally the female sings also. In winter, the male looses his scarlet coloring and becomes bright olive-green on the body.
2 comments:
Once while walking through my living room I looked outside just in time to se a male scarlet tanager swoop down to my birdbath. It is one of the few times I have actually SEEN one of these beauties. We get nesting summer tanagers here in GA and they love to feed their nestlings suet from our feeders.
When I was a child, in Western NY State, we would see nesting Scarlet Tanagers and Baltimore Oriols. Now that I'm in TX, I never get to see the magnificent colors. I miss them. Thanks for putting up the photo.
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