There are no more persistent singers around our woods recently than Scarlet Tanagers. One sings in the woods across the street from our house almost all day every day. He\u2019s one of the first to sing early each morning, soon after first light, and he continues to sing throughout the day \u2013 mid morning, late morning, early afternoon, mid-afternoon. I think surely he must take some breaks, but it seems that whenever I step outside, he\u2019s singing. <\/p>\n
In the evenings, he\u2019s one of the last to sing, well after the sun has gone down. He sings so constantly that it\u2019s tempting to think he sounds hoarse from singing so much \u2013 but the hoarse, almost harsh quality is the natural voice of the Scarlet Tanager. His song of five, six or seven rough phrases is often described as sounding like a Robin with a sore throat. Even knowing that, after hearing him sing for a long time, it almost hurts to listen. <\/p>\n
He follows a regular path along the edge of the woods and then deeper into the woods, toward a creek, and usually stays down in the foliage out of sight, but twice in the past week I\u2019ve caught vivid glimpses. Once, he was perched in the top of a large Red Oak at the corner of our street \u2013 the same spot where I saw him earlier in the spring \u2013 and the other time he was flying from one tree to another. Both times, he looked like a tiny, clear red drop of glass against the blue sky. His black wings were visible in contrast, but didn\u2019t show up as strikingly as the red. <\/p>\n
I have not seen a female, only the male. Occasionally I hear the chik-burr<\/span> calls, especially at twilight. This is the first year I\u2019ve ever seen and heard Scarlet Tanagers more often around the edges of our woods than Summer Tanagers \u2013 whose calls I frequently hear, but not their song, and I\u2019ve rarely seen one. In previous years, there\u2019s almost always been a Summer Tanager that sings around the yard, and a pair often foraging in the trees \u2013 but not this spring. One of our neighbors, however, says he sees them often and thinks they may have nested somewhere near. That\u2019s good to know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are no more persistent singers around our woods recently than Scarlet Tanagers. One sings in the woods across the street from our house almost all day every day. He\u2019s one of the first to sing early each morning, soon after first light, and he continues to sing throughout the day \u2013 mid morning, late […]<\/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\/184"}],"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=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}