Hidden Valley, Burlington ON. July 28th.2021. Scarlet Tanagers are reasonably common in the right habitat at the right time of year, but they can be hard to find. During migration they may be easier to spot at lower levels and in leafless trees. A spring male is an unforgettable sight so, if people tell me they’ve never seen one I believe it, there’s no way they could be mistaken. Here’s a male photographed one May morning in 2015, the colour is so intense that my cameras struggled to process the overload.
The problem with seeing Scarlet Tanagers is that, most of the time, they are birds of the loftiest tree tops; it’s only when you hear them that you clue into their whereabouts, and knowing their song, birding by ear, is hard going.
Today I encountered a Scarlet Tanager but it had none of the dramatic, clinching field marks, it was a rather drab olive yellow, so either a female or young of this year, and it was not singing at all. It was moving slowly around the heights of an oak and muttering the species’ less well-known call, ‘chik-burr’.
Still, I was pleased to find it. For all of my Breeding Bird Atlas efforts last month I had not seen or heard a Scarlet Tanager. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the omission, they are around, it is just one of many species missing, or at least not found this year, but which I’m sure will be uncovered in due course. If today’s tanager was on or near its home turf then I expect I’ll find them next year with a bit of effort. So, call it a lead for future years’ work; a valuable enough lead to be My Bird of the Day.
