The annual spring migration of birds to our region can be an exciting time for avid birders, in part because there are always a few birds that just don’t quite make it to the right destination. Even those that do eventually find their way, may decide to take the scenic route, and that can turn an average day of birding (fun, but a distant Blackburnian warbler was still the highlight) into a jaw-dropper.
For most of us, spotting any kind of a tanager pretty much automatically puts the day in jaw-dropper territory. For birders here in the North Country, saying you saw a tanager almost invariably means you’ve seen a scarlet tanager, and for those of us who’ve gotten a good look at one a few times over the years, we know that qualifies right there as a big day.
That, of course, assumes you saw a male scarlet tanager, because if you saw a female you probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. The male of this species is a brilliant scarlet across most of its body, the only exception being jet black wing and tail feathers, which make for a pretty dramatic contrast. The female, on the other hand, is a drab, greenish bird that could be confused with the female of just about any other tanager species out there.
At some point along the evolutionary highway, male tanagers were apparently rewarded for putting on a good show, and holding to this lesson has helped make the tanagers a pretty successful family of New World birds. Today, they boast the second-largest number of species in the Americas, occupying a wide range of niches down there in the tropics, which is where most of them remain year-round.
Fortunately for birders up here, at least the scarlet tanager is willing to make the trek north to take advantage of the insect explosion that occurs here every June, and that makes our local forests an outstanding place to raise a brood or two.
As I mentioned at the outset, migration season can send us the occasional curveball, but we wouldn’t know about it if it wasn’t for the legions of dedicated birders out there on a regular basis keeping tabs on all these comings and goings. In fact, it’s all those birders out there year after year, binoculars in hand (or Merlin or eBird on their phones these days) that have been able to tell us where birds should properly be found. Birds, after all, don’t provide we humans with carefully drawn maps of their normal ranges. We rely on serious birders (or ornithologists) to draw those lines.
Which is how an avid birder like Al Meadows, of Ranier, knows he’s had an exceptional spring for unusual tanager sightings. First, there was the western tanager that showed up earlier this month at a feeder near Birchdale, located along the Rainy River just west of I-Falls. Al, looking to add another species to his Koochiching County life list, tracked down the owner of the feeder to inquire about a visit. Turns out, the guy wasn’t going to be around, but he told Al to just make himself at home. As soon as he arrived, the western tanager was in the feeder mixed in with a bunch of other birds, so he was able to get some nice photos and another species for his county list. That would probably make for a good season for most birders, but Al was just getting started on the tanager hit parade.
Just days later, he got wind of an almost impossibly rare find, a hybrid between a scarlet tanager and a western tanager, that had shown up at a feeder in Littlefork. Turns out there’s a young guy who lives there, named Evan Peterson, still in his 20s, who is a birder extraordinaire and he just seems to find these oddities. To give you an idea of how rare this is, the last report of this particular hybrid in Minnesota dates back to 1949, in Anoka.
So, Al high-tailed it to Littlefork to get a look at a bird combo that is not only almost unheard of, but is also spectacular. At the time, it was eating cut oranges from a feeder across the street from Evan’s, right in town. Patience paid off as Al was able to capture the photo reprinted here.
But before he could leave, a woman walked across the street and asked him if he’d like to come see a summer tanager. By this time, Al had to have been pinching himself as he imagined adding yet another tanager to his county list, all in the span of a single month of May. Summer tanagers are also very rare here, since their normal summer range rarely extends north of southern Iowa, but it was quickly turning into just that kind of a spring.
And sure enough, he walked across the street and found the summer tanager, a first-year male with a distinctive plumage that is quite different (and for my money, far flashier) from the mature male’s solid red.
Thanks to Al and his camera, we now get to see what all the excitement was about. And this is just the tanagers. Last week, he also managed to photograph a Ross’s Goose, only the second such record in Kooch. Sure, the guy’s retired, but still.
And it seems there’s no rest for the avid birder in Kooch this spring. As recently as Monday, Al was headed to the I-Falls treatment lagoons after a friend spotted a Tufted Duck, a first in the county and only the fourth record in the state. That probably accounts for some of the traffic headed north on Hwy. 53 on Monday. When it comes to birds, especially the rare variety, word spreads quickly, and serious birders have their go-bags perched by the door. It’s migration season, after all. You have no idea what might be waiting for you out there.