Scarlet Tanager Female

Scarlet Tanager Female, originally uploaded by Hannibals Animals.

Not as brilliantly colored as the male, but she is a beauty!

Scarlet Tanager

Scarlet Tanager, originally uploaded by Hannibals Animals.

Always an exciting migrator to find, the Scarlet Tanager is a striking black-winged red bird, and is a common species of the eastern forest interior. Despite its brilliant coloring it is often overlooked because of its rather secretive behavior and its preference for the forest canopy. Luckily, I found this one pretty low, preening leaves for bugs.

A Few Warblers and a Tanager

It's been a tough year for seeking out warblers after my initial early finds. The forests have leafed out and closed their windows. A few I have found have been in my car as I drive by. I feel pretty lucky just to have these:



Pine Warbler









I've been looking for this guy all spring, concentrating on him in particular for a few weeks. Rattlin Antler told me of his siting and I was lucky enough that he showed up, just as I was leaving. He kept a distance though, unlike when Rattlin spotted him.



He took off pretty quickly, and out of sight.





Yellow Warbler



These guys always look happy to me!

Gasp!!!!!!! Scarlet Tanagers!

Back story: I haven't seen a Scarlet Tanager in 5 years, and that anomaly was my first EVER---EVER ! So...Fastforward to present: I totally freaked out when I saw this Scarlet Tanager sitting on a cable that bordered the road inside Kankakee State Park on Sunday. Truth be told, there were 2 perched, when I first saw them as I drove right past. [Insert gasp here!] Needless to say, right time, right place! Now...the predicament is, what to do about getting these guys on film without scaring them...Hmmm....I backed up very slowly, hugged the other side of the pavement as much as I could and had my co-pilot Cutti direct me to the spot. The road was a one-way so they (Tanagers) were as close as 4 feet from my car door. I didn't know how I was going to pull this off...


Obviously I got my shot, but it was cra-zy, that they didn't fly off...




There ended up being 3 of them on various oak trees...





I took all kinds of pictures until they flew away into the forest.





We found them again alittle south of the first sighting, along with a female.




It was a GREAT day!