James Russell Lowell, a great poet who was sensitive to and
closely in touch with nature, wrote, "Thy duty, winged flame
of spring, is but to love, fly and sing." There is no other
songbird in the eastern states and the Midwest that he could have
been describing other than the male scarlet tanager. In fact the
beautiful male cardinal that also comes to our feeders pales in
comparison.
So brilliant is the tanager’s red color that one wonders if
there are the proper pigments available to the artist to
accurately depict this dazzling creature. One might describe its
red as a super-saturated color, as though it possessed an inner
electrical force to make it glow and shimmer.
The female is dull greenish above, yellowish below with dark
brownish or blackish wings. The adult male’s flaming scarlet is
also set off by its jet black wings and tail. Occasionally you
hear someone describe it as the black-winged redbird. During
late summer and early fall the male shows splotchy green and red
as he molts to his yellow-green winter plumage, although he does
retain his black wing and tail color. The female keeps her same
colors year round.
There have been several times during the past week or more
when we’ve had four different male scarlet tanagers and one
female tanager simultaneously feeding on sunflower and safflower
seeds at our platform feeders. One of the birds was an immature
male as indicated by his brownish secondary and primary wing
feathers and also some faint yellowish wing bars.
The first male scarlet tanager arrived at our feeders this
year on May 10, an average arrival date at this latitude.
Previous records indicate that the main movement of these birds
through northeastern Wisconsin occurs between May 15-30.
Arrivals anywhere in the state before the end of April are rare.
Two of the four groups of Wildflower Pilgrimage people we
hiked with in a large mixed hardwoods this past weekend were
treated with exceptionally good close looks at a male scarlet
tanager that fed very quietly with a minimum of movement. In
fact the bird appeared to be almost sluggish at times, perfectly
content to "show off" for our group of 20 hikers, all
who quite ecstatically marveled at its awesome beauty. The bird
left us with the feeling that he was fully as enchanted in us as
we were in him.
These birds eat primarily insects during the breeding season.
Their diet may include caterpillars, moths, bees, wasps and
beetles that are located mostly in the mid-canopy. Occasionally
the bird will sally into the air for insects that are on the
wing. Come late summer and fall, their diet includes many
berries and other fruits, very likely important for fat
deposition for the long fall migration that will take them
primarily to the base of the Andes Mountains, and western
Amazonia from Panama to nort hwestern Bolivia. The bird is said
to be infrequently observed and poorly known in its winter range.
Due to the tanager’s frequent location in the leafy canopy of
trees during nesting time, and also because of its slow and
deliberate movements, it is the bird’s song or call notes that
will reveal its position. Its somewhat raspy and blurry
"sore-throated robin" song has been described as
"zureet, zeeyer, zeero, zeery," while its call note
sounds like "CHIP-gurr, or CHICK-kurr."
Tanagers prefer the higher and denser forest canopy for
nesting in a woods having a larger variety of tree species, a
smaller per cent of ground cover and a higher density of
9-12-inch diameter trees. Its nest tree will be deciduous,
mostly oak or sometimes sugar maple in our region, and the nest
will often be 20-30 feet above the ground and placed on a
horizontal branch within a cluster of leaves usually about
halfway out from the trunk.
If you go into a woods and hear the songs of the wood thrush,
eastern wood-pewee, great-crested flycatcher, red-eyed vireo,
ovenbird, rose-breasted grosbeak and indigo bunting, then there
is an excellent possibility of the scarlet tanager also nesting
in that environment. You very likely will be enjoying a pristine
large wooded tract of over 50 acres that has not been fragmented
by roads and development, activity that nearly always will
discourage the tanager and its other high-priority fellow birds
fro m nesting there.
The best strategies to maintain populations of scarlet
tanagers are to protect large existing forests and to promote the
establishment of forested corridors to reconnect isolated forest
patches.
Welcome these "flames of spring" to your woods and
do everything in your power to maintain the nesting and feeding
conditions these star performers require for living their lives.
Few songbirds add such dazzling color
to the spring woods as the scarlet tanager.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 05/30/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
