{"id":194,"date":"2008-07-21T21:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=194"},"modified":"2008-07-21T21:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T02:16:00","slug":"the-dean-martin-of-birdsong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"The Dean Martin of Birdsong"},"content":{"rendered":"

For two and a half weeks, I didn\u2019t hear the song, or even the pik-a-tuk<\/span> calls of a Summer Tanager \u2013 usually one of our most vocal summer birds. I last heard them on June 27 \u2013 then not again until last Wednesday, July 16, when I was leaving for an early morning appointment and heard the familiar song again from one of the trees in our front yard. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ve been around, but they\u2019ve been pretty quiet. <\/p>\n

Since then, a Summer Tanager has been singing often around our house and in the woods nearby. This morning, it was the first song I heard when I awoke, and when I went out for a walk about 8:00, the male was sitting in a low branch of a pecan tree, in full view, singing rather lazily, barely seeming to open his bill as he crooned his song of smooth, velvety phrases. <\/p>\n

As I watched him, a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird flew up and perched beside the Tanager, just a little further out on the same branch. For maybe 30 seconds they both sat there \u2013 the relatively big, placid, solid-red bird with the long thick bill and the full, rich voice, and the tiny little gray and green bird, a whirring, nervous ball of energy, momentarily still. The Tanager blinked first, leaning forward and flying, and the hummer zoomed off after it, as if chasing it \u2013 but I don\u2019t know if it really was or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For two and a half weeks, I didn\u2019t hear the song, or even the pik-a-tuk calls of a Summer Tanager \u2013 usually one of our most vocal summer birds. I last heard them on June 27 \u2013 then not again until last Wednesday, July 16, when I was leaving for an early morning appointment and […]<\/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\/194"}],"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=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}