Female Summer Tanager in an Apple Tree
One of my favorite spots in our neighborhood is a rambling, tangled thicket of pines, privet and other trees, shrubs and vines that grows on the edge of a yard and along the road. I almost always stop by here on a walk, because it’s a good place to find many different kinds of birds. A kind of small, unmowed oasis, it’s surrounded on three sides by a large grassy yard shaded by many pecan trees – an area where Red-shouldered Hawks sometimes sit on low limbs to hunt – and on the other side, the thicket’s just across the road from a heavily wooded area with a creek, so woodland birds like warblers and vireos sometimes wander in. A couple of mornings ago, fairly early, while the road was still in shade, two does and four fawns came tumbling out of the thicket and ran in almost single file across the road in front of me, into the deeper woods.
This morning a female Cardinal flew into a tall old apple tree that stands just on the edge of the thicket, and I noticed that it’s as loaded with big apples as the peach tree in the field is with its fruit. And in the apple tree (though not interested in the apples, I think) was a female Summer Tanager. A tawny brown with rose-orange in her wings and tail, she was holding a caterpillar in her thick bill. She seemed to notice me when I stopped, and slipped behind some leaves where she was less easy to see, to subdue and eat the caterpillar.
Meanwhile, a little further up the road, two Broad-winged Hawks were out this morning, but hard to see. They were perched in treetops close to the road, but well screened by foliage. I only found them because several Crows were harassing them loudly, and now and then one of the hawks would whistle. Finally one hawk flew across the road and over the trees toward the south, and three or four minutes later another flew in the other direction, back toward the woods. The Crows kept cawing for a few minutes, then flew away, too.
In our yard, a female Eastern Bluebird is making trips in and out of the bluebird house. It has surprised me because it seems very late for nesting and very hot – but there she is. She sits in tree limbs in between trips, panting. I try to keep all the bird baths full of fresh water, so maybe that helps a little. The creek’s not far away, but the bluebirds are frequent visitors to the bird baths.
Today has been very hot again, mid or maybe upper 90s, with a burning blue sky and big white cumulous clouds forming by mid afternoon. The loud, rasping whine of cicadas is almost constant, rising and falling all day, gradually replaced by the chattering songs of katydids at night, a sound I love and find strangely relaxing. Surely this long hot spell must break at some point soon, but it just keeps coming, day after day. At least we’ve been lucky here to get plenty of rain, too, with late afternoon thunder showers and storms now and then. That’s a saving grace.