By Mel Carriere
My bird blog has been grounded for several days by a strange stomach bug I have been battling with that has left my typing fingers drained and weary, with no urge to take flight. I hope those of you who are regular readers will pardon my absence as I shut myself up in my nest to recuperate.
There have been a couple of interesting developments in my little corner of the bird world since we last touched base. On April 29th I went outside in the morning to hear the unusual sounds of what could have been Robins, which are very rare in this part of the country even though they are in extreme abundance in Northern California, but which I suspect were probably Western Tanagers, the bird you see in the photo above. The song of the two is creepily similar, almost as if one was deliberately imitating the other, but the reason I lean toward Tanager is because the first of May is the time that these birds typically migrate through our suburban San Diego neighborhoods, on their way to breeding grounds in our county's higher, conifer covered elevations. This is strictly anecdotal and does not have any research behind it, but it seems like since the 2007 fire stripped our Cuyamaca range of much of its tree cover I have not seen this species pass through in the numbers that it did formerly.
My first encounter with this bird came on 6 May, 1999, when I was delivering the mail on my route in South San Diego, very close to the area where it abuts with Imperial Beach. The male tanager appeared very unexpectedly in an unkempt garden, and for me seemed as peculiar and out of place as finding an elephant drinking from your bird bath. I was familiar with this splendidly colored bird because the beautifully plumaged males appropriately adorn the cover of many a field guide, but I had imagined the species to be restricted to the cool conifer canopies of upper elevations.
That day and for a few days afterward I came across Tanagers in abundance in some ornamental fig trees that lined a dead end street on my route. I thought perhaps they were attracted to the thick clumps of fruit that hang down from those trees at that season, or maybe the insects attracted to the ripening fruit, or perhaps both. At any rate, this brief apparition was not an anomaly because the tanagers returned punctually every year in the early days of May before moving on to the sugar pines and incense cedars of our higher peaks, where I would encounter them while roaming through the then blissfully shady glades that have since been laid barren and exposed by fire. Then I myself migrated to other temporary job opportunities and lost touch with the tanagers for a while.
Fast forward to this 29th of April, when I thought I heard one singing from the row of Eucalyptus trees to the south of my neighborhood, but the thick foliage would not permit me to confirm the identity of the songster. It could very well have been an equally rare, equally transitory Robin, but the proximity of the date to the first of May made me think, or perhaps want to believe because of an air of nostalgia for the past, that it was a tanager that was stopping by to refresh my memory of 1999's golden age of birding, when everything I saw with wings was new.
The same day I thought I saw a male tanager perched on a wire as I drove by it in my mail truck in approximately the same area I saw my first, but the glimpse was too fleeting to confirm it. They could be out there in droves for all I know; this being, appropriately enough, the 16th anniversary of that first encounter, but because I sit here at home nursing my sick tummy they are singing out their wheezy Robin imitations without my being there to witness it.
I guess I will have to give my other bird updates later. The tanagers have taken up more space than I expected.
Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive. I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.
Wonderful image of this Western Tanager is by Kati Fleming, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, taken 26 June 2010 in Wyoming. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Tanager_piranga_ludoviciana;_body_visible,_male.jpg#file
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