A pair of Summer Tanagers spends a lot of time in the trees around our house, and this morning I watched them together, preening among the leaves of a large white oak. The female \u2013 who spent much more time on her grooming than the male did, at least on this occasion \u2013 looked beautiful in a quiet, understated way, with her rich dark yellow breast, and olive-yellow back and wings. She was so close I could even see the faint yellow ring around each eye. She blended in so well with the leaves that I probably would not have seen her if they hadn\u2019t flown in together \u2013 the rose-red male quickly catching my eye. With their long, thick bills and slightly crested heads, Summer Tanagers usually look more sturdy and strong than graceful, but this morning the female was the picture of feminine charm.<\/p>\n
The male Summer Tanager sings early every morning right outside our bedroom windows, and often during the rest of the day, and their soft, staccato \u201cpi-tuk\u201d calls \u2013 often sounding very domestic and expressive \u2013 lace through the trees all day. It\u2019s a pleasant, peaceful, summery sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pair of Summer Tanagers spends a lot of time in the trees around our house, and this morning I watched them together, preening among the leaves of a large white oak. The female \u2013 who spent much more time on her grooming than the male did, at least on this occasion \u2013 looked beautiful […]<\/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\/81"}],"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=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}