Scarlet Tanager

North Shore Trails, Arboretum, Royal Botanical Gardens’, Hamilton. ON. May 25, 2022.  I joined a co-birder friend early this morning to bird one of our transects. (funny how ‘bird’ the noun has become a verb: I bird, you bird, she birds, etc.) It was still and cool, Lyn wore gloves – but then she usually does. An industrial size lawnmower in the arboretum made enough racket that we changed our route, only to be drowned out by the passing of a 100-car-long freight train. But when the air finally cleared it was typical and good late-May birding with lots of activity and song. It was mostly birds determined to stay and breed rather than those on their way heading north.

This little corner of the world is a mix of hardwood forest, the arboretum with its scattered specimen trees, and farm fields all bisected and trisected by railway and power lines. It was the hardwood forests that gave us the best of the morning. Two species: Red-eyed Vireos and Scarlet Tanagers dominated the soundscape, both favour mature forests as summer breeding habitat. Red-eyed Vireos sing incessantly, their soothing, measured song is a recitation of two or three-note phrases often characterized as “Here I am. See me. Way up. Tree top.’  They carry this on all day, from sun up to sun down. Early in the last century naturalist in northern Ontario counted one individual bird’s songs over a full day, from sun up to sun down, and tallied about twenty-two thousand iterations!

The Scarlet Tanager is an almost mythical bird, one which, if glimpsed, seems eye-poppingly improbable. I’ve added a few photos, today’s bird is immediately above. We could hear several singing males in the treetops, we managed to spot one female and after a search found this gaudy male above us. Its preference for the forest canopy makes it difficult to spot but familiarity with its song improves your chances. I have come to like its rather coarse and raspy song if only because it gives the bird away, it led us to today’s and for that it was My Bird of the Day.

Our morning was rich in variety with fifty species including three from the world of flycatchers Eastern Kingbirds, Great–crested Flycatchers and an Eastern Phoebe, countless Brown-headed Cowbirds, a Common Raven, and the sight and sound of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.