Tanagers are some of the planet’s most beautiful birds . . . often a combination of bright reds and yellows. There are 386 species of Tanagers scattered across the world, but only four are found in North America.
The most common of these is the Scarlet Tanager which nests throughout the northeast and into Canada.
In Maine we also get occasional visits by Summer and Western Tanagers . . . one or two of these birds show up in Maine each year. Ingrid and I had one on our feeders for three hours last spring.
The rarest of the North American Tanager is the Hepatic Tanager . . . which summer in New Mexico, Arizona and small parts of California and Texas. When fall arrives, this grayish red (male) and grayish yellow (female) bird heads to South America for the winter.
This morning, I checked Cornell University’s eBird sighting database. Yesterday there was a single Hepatic Tanager reported west of Los Angeles and another in Madera Canyon, Arizona . . . and oh yes . . . a third in Stockton Springs, Maine!!!
This is believed to be the first Hepatic ever found in New England . . . and at the end of December . . . in Maine . . . in a snowstorm . . . remarkable.
Ingrid made the trip up to Stockton Spring, about an hour south of Bar Harbor and found the bird on a feeder after a half hour of searching. When a rarity shows up in a community, birders will descend on the area and then spread out to find the bird. Ingrid was the hero of the afternoon, re-finding it and calling the other birders in for a look.
With our Big Year beginning in two days, I decided to stay home and work on some software we plan to use on our adventure. In retrospect, I made the wrong decision.
A Hepatic Tanager in Maine . . . On December 30 . . . remarkable.
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