Like the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, almost all of our neotropical birds \u2013 birds that spend the summer here and winter in Mexico, Central or South America or the Caribbean \u2013 have seemed fewer and farther between than usual in our neighborhood this year. This may be, at least in part, because the month of June has been very gray and rainy so far, though I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the only reason. All the trees and other vegetation are lush and green, and it\u2019s hard to complain about rain when we\u2019ve had so many hot, dry years. But it\u2019s begun to seem like a very wet and soggy summer \u2013 and a summer with few birds.<\/p>\n
Most of the usual summer species are here \u2013 I can find them \u2013 but they\u2019re harder to find, not as common a part of a summer day. In past years, for instance, Summer Tanagers have been among our most familiar birds. Their lilting, Robin-like songs and the quiet pik-a-tuk<\/em> calls of the pair are among summer\u2019s most characteristic sounds. The rose-red male and yellow female haunt the trees around our back yard and in wooded areas throughout the neighborhood, hunting for insects. But this year, although I hear a Summer Tanager singing most days, it\u2019s usually in the distance, and I only see one now and then around our own yard \u2013 and even less often in other parts of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, almost all of our neotropical birds \u2013 birds that spend the summer here and winter in Mexico, Central or South America or the Caribbean \u2013 have seemed fewer and farther between than usual in our neighborhood this year. This may be, at least in part, because the month of June has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1707"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1709,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions\/1709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}