Scarlet Tanager--He's Baaack!

This is a post about a scarlet tanager settin' on a post.


The post stands outside my studio window, and I can't remember why we put it up. Maybe to hang things off'n. I recollect a hanging basket on that nail there.

On this fine day there is something sitting on the post that's hard to miss. He seems to be comparing his reds to those of the geraniums.



In truth, he's considering a bath.

I have just cleaned the Spa and since he keeps an eye on it and on me, I know he'll be around soon after I put away the Comet and the scrub brush.

If I had silken plumage the color of a ripe jalapeno, I'd be fussy about where I bathed, too.



Inside, I am hyperventilating, hoping to catch a few more exposures of him with the red gerania.



I am not disappointed. He shuttles between the post and the Spa, perching, preening, ruffling, then diving back in.

He is a rocket, a smooth scarlet packet of beauty. And this bubbly Bird Spa has lured him out of his forest fastnesses.


Well, that, and a scrub brush and some Comet. Never think that the birds don't appreciate the many things, big and small, we do to make them happy.

A Tanager Comes to Call

I've written about the Bird Spa before. It attracts birds to my studio window that I really wouldn't see otherwise.

This lovely scarlet tanager visits most every day. He likes it when I scrub the Spa with Comet, clean the pump, and change the water. Then he comes more often, two or three times a day.

When he's had a drink and maybe a bath, he can't help but sing about it. Once he fetched up only a few feet from the window and I was ready with my camera.

His song sounds like a robin with a very bad sore throat--burry and harsh, not very melodic. That's OK. You don't need to be melodic when you flouresce. He could say BAP BAP BAP for all I care.



In this photo, you can see the retained feathers from winter plumage--greenish olive--in his lower wing.


You beautiful thing. Keep visiting, and I will keep scrubbing, because you deserve the best.

Missing Tennessees

I'm happy to say that I still have warblers in the yard as I write this. They're all yellow-rumped warblers, the most behaviorally and dietetically flexible of all the wood warblers. Right now, five of them are flitting around a pile of suet dough on the deck railing. I've never had that happen before. A Cape May warbler sampled suet dough briefly in late October, but it was in the company of yellow-rumpeds. And we did have a pine warbler eating it early last spring, but this gobbly little bunch is unprecedented. They've actually figured out how to beg--to get my attention from way in the kitchen.

I thought I'd share some photos of a bathing Tennessee warbler, taken in September.

The post next to the Bird Spa is often the vantage point from which birds make up their minds about bathing. Ooh, looks good. I'm thirsty, and I could use a bath, too.
I'll flutter and ruffle my wings. It will feel so good to be in water!
Ahhhhh!
The durned thing about starting a bath is that everybody else wants to jump in too. Copycats.
A Tennessee warbler has a reputation to uphold. We're tuff.
Hello. I believe I was bathing here first.
And I happen to like where you are bathing.
I'm sorry. Am I in your way?
Don't mind me. I bathe a little large.
Well, excuuuuuuse MEEEE.Better. Much better.
You lazy resident birds need to realize that we long-distance migrants get first dibs on the bath. You can bathe anytime. We have things to do, places to go, people to see. Begone!

Blackburniantics

We've been starting every day with birdwatching off the deck and tower. Such joy, to spend an hour or two just watching birds. What a way to start the day. It's torture to come inside, but around 10 AM it slows down enough to let me go back into the studio. Soon enough, these little migrants, gaudy and flashy and delicate and exotic, will be gone, well on their way to their Central and South American wintering grounds. So we revel in them while we can, soaking them up and taking digital souvenirs of their stay with us.

It's a thrill to get enough pictures of a single species to make a little photoessay, perhaps get a tiny glimpse into their complex behavior, their lives. I gather what bits I may in the privileged moments I spend in their presence.

I glance at the bird Spa, which I do hundreds of times each day as I "work," and see something tiny, colorful, out of place. A warbler. Which one? Perhaps the titmouse wonders, too.
It jumps to the dry rock, revealing a cheek patch and the hint of a burning orange throat. Nice wingbars! A Blackburnian warbler. What a fine sight to greet the morning.
I study my books, but can't decide whether this is an adult female or a first fall male. No matter. It's beautiful.

Turning toward me, it shows its glowing throat. It takes a long, soaky bath.It repairs to the nearby birch to preen and fluff its damp feathers.Lots of work to do under the wings.I am flabbergasted at the length and flexibility of its neck. Blackburnians are such compact little warblers, but this neck would do credit to an ibis. And I'm stunned again to see it twist its tiny body into the most impossible position as it surveys the yard. If I drew a bird with its leg like this, any ornithologist worth her salt would shoot me down. Including me. Yep, that's the hind toe on the outside edge of the branch.
Soon, it's time to think about leaving. The warbler surveys the birch leaves for a morsel of food to speed it on its way, checks the sky.It hops up to an exposed branch, giving me a fleeting moment's more pleasure.It mounts to the top of the sycamore we planted close to our deck

and is gone.

Tanager Toilette

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be watching the Bird Spa when a tanager or oriole stops by to wash the grime of a long migration from its brilliant feathers. This tanager was singing lustily in the birch just outside my studio window. I’d been gardening all morning, and had just come in the studio to check my e-mail. My camera was still outside on the picnic table in the front yard, naturally. I dithered in agony. If I tried to sneak out the door to get my camera, I might spook the tanager. But in my experience, this is usually a once-per-spring event.

I finally decided to go for it. I walked out, hugging the side yard, head down, as if the last thing on my mind was the beautiful bird bathing in my Spa. I grabbed the camera off the picnic table and walked back, head down. The tanager never budged. Once back inside, I focused and snapped, capturing his beauty to share. My studio is like a big ol’ blind, and birds readily give up their portraits and secrets to me as I lurk in its friendly confines.
How lucky we are to have such a bird in the treetops, singing its hurried, burry song, the robin with a sore throat.

This is why I’m happy to scrub, rinse and refill the Spa every four days without fail. Tanagers like it sparkling clean.

He hadn't been bathing long when a female bluebird, weary from brooding her young, came down and body-slammed him out of the water. Nice. Mrs. B. You can bathe any time. Why must you be so obnoxious?
Oh, I'm not bad. But this garish woodland bird needs to understand that this is my bath, and there are rules about its use. Mainly, I use it first and always. What's he done to contribute to society? Sing? Fly 4,000 miles to get to his territory? Donate sperm here and there? I am a working mother. I've got babies to feed. I bathe first.
The tanager repaired to the poolside birch, where he sorted through his glowing plumage only a yard from the bossy bluebird.Must dip into the oil gland to waterproof my feathers.Ahh. I don't expect to see another tanager in the bath until fall. Who knows what goes on while I'm traveling? Best not to think of the things unseen, unappreciated; best to be happy with what I do manage to capture.

Birds of Passage

A molting juvenile male indigo bunting gets a shower from a field sparrow.

They’re gone, almost all gone, the birds of passage. Every year, the Big Sit rolls around, and it seems uncannily timed for the moment that the last warbler of autumn quits the place entirely. Sure, we usually see the first junco of the year on Big Sit Sunday, but many of the birds that peopled (or birdled) our trees only two days earlier are gone like a puff of smoke.

The nights have turned cold lately, finally. It feels final, anyway. It feels like time to haul plants into the greenhouse . It feels like time to take the last desperate measures to propagate plants whose cuttings didn’t root, or give it up and dig them up and bring them in as mother plants. It feels like time to get the garden cart and load it up with tropical mandevillas and bougainvilleas and grunt it down the side hill to the Garden Pod. Time to fire up the little gas heater in there and bask in warmth. I am thinking these thoughts, this same person who was cursing the 90-degree days just a couple of weeks ago.

And I've spent the entire day outside in the first nice weather for what seems like two weeks, hauling plants and digging geraniums, planting a serviceberry my friend Cindy gave me two years ago, planting a daylily Margaret gave me for my birthday, planting the beautiful blue rose of Sharon I got at Chautauqua, planting two propagules of the heirloom lilac bush. I've pulled the pond pump and drained the filter and taken it all inside. I've drained the hoses and taken them in, too. I've cleaned the Spa and made sure it's bubbling furiously so as not to freeze. I've filled the feeders again. I've mowed the lawn for the last time (I hope) and I can hear the growl of the weed whacker as Bill trims the long hair around the beds and edges. I'm going to go out before dark and cover the huge red mandevilla with a sheet, maybe drape some sheets over the salvia beds. I brought in the Pig of Good Fortune, who is made of terra cotta and who is slowly sloughing away, nose first, and found the cellophane of a monarch chrysalis that had hatched out, affixed to his belly. Good fortune, indeed.

My legs and back ache and I'm tired to the bone, a good tired. It's a good thing it's getting dark; I'm collapsing. The greenhouse is bursting with beautiful flowers in fresh new pots and it's all clean and sunny in there and it makes me look forward to the winter, to know I have it to go to when I'm needing a dose of green and fragrant things. I filled it last week and put some more plants in there today. I think I've got everything I'll need for the winter...heliotrope, mandevilla, hibiscus, impatiens, fuchsia, geraniums, my big ol' cacti, the jade tree with a trunk as big around as my arm, my rosemary tree...on and on. It's lovely in there.

The Carolina chickadees are looking sleek in their new winter plumage. As Mary has pointed out, this is a hard bird to get in the frame, much less in focus. Ahhh, Mary. Are you ready for your new Digital Rebel yet? Ooh, I love to tease you, especially with chickadee pictures. Once you get your new camera, you'll try to catch the highlight in a chickadee's eye, instead of trying just to catch the chickadee. Easier said than done!
Looking back at the birds of passage: I photographed what's probably the last indigo bunting in the Spa on October 12. This is a gorgeous first-year male, just coming into winter plumage. It reminds me very much of the cordon bleu finch of Africa (and aviculture). Immature male indigo buntings undergo an extra molt in the fall that gives them some blue nuptial plumage. Most birds would travel to the wintering grounds in first basic plumage. It's an energetically expensive thing to do, so there must be a reason for it, right? It's thought to perhaps confer competitive advantage on the wintering grounds, where they're fighting mature males for territory. But we don't know that for sure.

Chipping sparrows have massed and largely departed, making way for the juncos and tree sparrows. They appreciate our wild “lawn,” studded with crabgrass of many kinds. The nice thing about crabgrass if you’re a bird is that it makes so many little seeds, and it heads out so quickly that there are always crabgrass dinners available. The nasty thing about crabgrass if you like a neat lawn is exactly the same thing. Good thing I look at crabgrass as chippy food. Here’s a little klatsch of chippies under the Bird Spa, going at the seedheads. Love it!

One from the seed eating bunch flew up briefly to perch in my studio birch. I really like this shot. Such a pretty little sparrow. I miss them when they leave, and I’m so happy when they come back in April. Something to get me through the winter. I'll be saving hair clippings all winter for them to weave into their nests come April.

Queer Eye for Birds

We all have bad hair days. I'm having one right now. After what seemed like the perfect haircut only a week ago, I suddenly have this WAVE that comes up out of my forehead, stands erect, then crashes and foams high over my right ear. So I could empathize with this cedar waxwing, who was apparently having a bad crest day.
There was some kind of goozum above his left eye, sticking the feathers together. An occupational hazard of fruit-eating. He didn't contemplate long in the birch by the Bird Spa. He took action.
Much as I love to watch birds bathe, there is always some part of me (probably the photographer) that says, "Don't go in the water!" I hate to see those porcelain-finished feathers get wet and rumpled. Like me, this goldfinch couldn't tear his eyes away from the spectacle.

Dude, you are ruining your 'do.
The marvel to me is how, having been so mussed up, these birds manage to get their crests just perfect again, like the Werewolf of London. Barbules and barbicels all interlocking, the finish smoother than before, and all that without product. I have probably five different kinds, no, wait (Philip Pelusi's Hair Honey, Origins Hair Dresser and University of Mane, Biolage's gel, Bioterra's phytogel, some kind of gawd-awful crystal hair set gel that makes it feel like dead straw, Bedhead by Tigi's fruity slimy green gloop, some kind of hair wax whose name I forget...even Dep...make that nine and counting) and I still can't get it to look the way I want. Pffft. Maybe I should take a hint from the waxwings and go give myself a swirlie in the Bird Spa.

What's that Bird?

I'm trying not to commit too many Science Chimp attacks on my fellow bloggers. I'm paranoid, to tell you the truth, because I don't want people to roll their eyes and say, "There she goes again!" If someone asks, well, I'm happy to try to help identify something. It's a Science Chimp's favorite thing to do. Here's the thing: we all get caught out from time to time. Bill caught me on this one. I photographed this bird, virtually convinced that it was a summer tanager. All the marks were there. Large paleish bill, low-contrast wings, warm ochre-green-yellow coloration, longish tail. I truly thought it was a summer tanager until I examined the photos, and until I saw what might have been the same bird the next evening. Bill and I had a lively exchange about it. "Oh! there's that summer tanager that's been hanging around the Spa!" I said. "That looks like a scarlet to me," Bill commented. Being a chimp, I went one by one through the ID characters that I thought added up to summer tanager. He wasn't impressed. It seemed like an impasse. And then the bird sang, sitting up in the bare branches of a dead tree. It was a scarlet tanager's song.

So I looked at these photos with a fresh eye, and realized that, while it bears a certain resemblance to a summer tanager, this bird lacks the oversized and rather homely yellow beak, the long tail and undertail coverts, the rich coloration, and the large size of a summer tanager. But look how big that bill looks when the bird's head is sleeked all the way down!
From a field mark standpoint, this bird is pretty confusing. Scarlet tanagers are supposed to have blackish wings, which contrast with a pale body. Summer tanagers have very little contrast in wing to body. Like this bird. Or like a fresh juvenile scarlet tanager.
Scarlet tanagers are supposed to have darkish beaks, not yellowish, and the beak should be much more delicate than a summer tanager's. This one has a dark culmen, but the mandible is pale. Again, this is a function of its youth.

He contemplates his own identity. Darn it, I'm still not dead sure. But I can tell you that all the photos in this post depict the same individual.Bathes with an immature indigo bunting.
It just goes to show you that it's easy to misidentify a bird, and uncertainty can be waiting right around the corner. It helps to have multiple observations, multiple observers, and it really helps when the bird opens that indeterminately sized-and-colored bill and sings!
It really looks like a scarlet from this angle:

I'm convinced that birds enjoy bathing together. One splashing about brings others from far and near. It's so cute...the bather gets going, and birds come to the nearby birch and fluff their plumage, and you can see them thinking, "Man! That looks like fun!" The next thing you know they're in the tub. This young cardinal was geeking out, thinking she was bathing with a celebrity. Allow me to splash you.

Yellowthroat Toilette

Regular readers of this blog will remember the yellow-throated warbler (Dendroica dominica) that hit my studio window in early September. In that post, I made a bit of a slight against the common yellowthroat, and one of my old friends called me on it. I said that the yellow-throated warbler outclassed Geothlypis trichas six ways to Sunday in the beauty department. As my pal pointed out, this wasn't fair, so I want to go on record here as stating that the common yellowthroat beats the tar out of its more elegant cousin on the cuteometer.
The common yellowthroat is a bird of wet meadows and marshes. It likes water. It looooves water. It is among the most enthusiastic bathers that visit our Bird Spa.
Like any songbird, a yellowthroat bathes by first dunking its head, then raising the head, which rolls water down the back. During this maneuver, it flutters its wings, which sends spray flying into the plumage. This immature male yellowthroat added some curliques to the routine, though. First, he literally dove beneath the water's surface, like a dipper. He'd travel for several inches, pushing with his feet, then pop up to bathe like a normal bird.When he was done fluttering, he'd pop straight up about six inches into the air. He looked like a kernel of corn with heat under it. He'd come down in another place and start the routine all over again.
Ahh, serendipity, and the flutter of small birds' wings. I can practically live on both.

Crazy Mad Spa-ful of Birds

You'll have to believe me when I tell you this is not unusual. Two cardinals, an eastern bluebird, a tufted titmouse and a cedar waxwing, all bathing at once. The Word is Out on this bird bath, folks.

August at Indigo Hill is just flat-out ridiculous for birds. Especially when it's hot, and the fabulous Bird Spa is clean and bubbling away, and it's literally the only accessible water for about a mile around. It is deleriously, ridiculously good. I' ve been working on my book, perched on the drafting stool by the studio windows just so I can keep an eye on the Spa, and I barely get anything done for all the birds coming in to it. I spend much of the day dropping everything, grabbing the camera, talking to myself and laughing out loud at the things I see. Anyone who calls on the phone has to deal with the zip and zing of my camera shutter as I deploy it in the middle of a sentence. I don't care who's calling. If there's a pewee at the bird bath, they're going to have to listen to the camera.

It's hot out there, and when the birds get a load of that clean bubbling water, they literally start panting for it, like this lovely cedar waxwing. You can definitely see how that gape could handle a full-sized bing cherry.
There's really nothing I don't love about this bit of bird-attracting gear. It has it all--a capacious reservoir, a fairly easy-to-clean design, generous size, nice loud burbling sound, a powerful pump. The very best thing about it is the way it pulls woodland birds right into the yard; birds that wouldn't have anything to do with a feeder; birds that are simply thirsty and want to take a bath. Cedar waxwings, for instance, are not going to come to a feeder for any commercial food. They could be lured in with pokeberries, I suppose, but they aren't birds you can expect to come calling. And yet the Spa drives them nuts.

Take the eastern wood-pewee, a flycatcher related to the phoebe. (Take my pewee, please!) Ever see one of those at a feeding station? Not unless there's a bug he wants on it. But here he is, contemplating a quick sip or maybe a bath at the Spa right below him.
Same thing applies to red-eyed vireos. That's a mighty nice bird to see at eye level, from the comfort of your studio. When do you ever get to see pewees and vireos bathe? When you've got a recirculating bird bath in a sweet spot. I know, his eye doesn't look very red. That's another one of those bird names, like red-bellied woodpecker, that works better if you're a turn-of-the-century ornithologist examining a bird in the hand.

Notice how many times I've used the word "clean" in this post? That's because I've figured out that birds are infinitely more attracted to a freshly-scrubbed and filled bath than one that's got droppings and feathers floating around in it, or scuzzy algae covering it. They sit in the trees overhead, watching me give it its twice-weekly scrubbing with Ajax, sending me telepathic instructions.

You missed a spot over there on the bowl. There's still a patch of algae there.
Thank you, Mrs. Waxwing.
Are you done yet? Because I'd really like to take a bath now.
Going as fast as I can.
Would this cedar waxwing immerse those exquisite feathers in anything but a freshly-cleaned Spa? Nope, nor should she. And neither should Baby Wax. Awwww! Gotta love the striped onesie.
All photos, unbelievably enough, taken in a single afternoon, August 29, 2007. Weather sunny, humid, scraping 90 degrees. There are dozens more, but that's enough for one post. I am definitely going to melt my computer with all these pictures. And I just got back from the Washington County Fair, where there were fancy chickens and bunnehs and goats and plates of fried dough that looked for all the world like gutpiles. There. Used it on Sunday. Thanks for all your comments on the last one. Loved 'em.

Watching at the Window

Lately, I've been tethered to the drawing table, doing a journal cover. I don't know why my number keeps coming up for the Auk, but it does, and I'm not arguing. If they're not sick of me yet, I'll do another cover for them. I've had the ivory-billed woodpecker flying through the fall bayou, the long-tailed manakins dancing, and now I'm working on a subtly beautiful fringillid. Fun!

It's a terrific hummingbird summer, after a horrible one last year. Last year, my high count at the feeder all summer was four birds at once. This year, it's 14, and the humming and bickering and thrumming and chittering never stop. I LOVE it. I stand right next to the feeder and play with my camera and the willing subjects. I've got endless flight pictures of hummingbirds now. Like this one. I know it's no prizewinner, because I was too lazy to make sure there was a nice background, but I like seeing them frozen in mid hummm.

I like even more seeing them sitting on favored perches, and feeding from the flowers in my garden. This little dude sits in the birch right outside the studio window most all day, every day. He's guarding the cardinalflower bed directly below him. Oh, how I love to take pictures of him, trying to get his gorget flashing. Almost:

And better:I sneak glances out the window every time I go to dip a brush back into the paint. And I see the most wonderful things, so I keep the camera with its 300 mm. zoom lens on and ready at hand. I especially like watching the bath on these dry, late-summer days. It's almost never empty, especially when it's just been cleaned. The birds really appreciate my scrubbing it with Comet to get all the slime and droppings out of it, so I do that about every fourth day. Then, they literally line up to bathe there. Birds know from clean: they have to, to keep those flight feathers in top condition. They hate to be dirty, and they don't like dirty water or feeders, either.
This time of year, we've got oodles of young scarlet tanagers, as well as molting adults in every motley plumage. We've noticed that scarlet tanagers are very feisty birds. They love to chase and fight and defend what they believe to be theirs. Like the entire Bird Spa. Bad judgement on this young tufted titmouse's part to challenge Miss Bossy Boots. Titmice are feisty, too. This one gives a mewling call and threatens with open bill. But it still won't go in the water with that big toothed bill pointed at it. And finally: the shot I guess I was waiting for. I was waiting for all of them, really, but this is the kicker. The titmouse reminds me of Garuda.
The tanager won, as it has in every confrontation I've witnessed. Notice that she is sitting right on the bubbler, turning the spa into a tanager bidet. And feeling not one bit apologetic about it, either. Maybe she just had a birthday and is feeling like she's entitled. The titmouse had to wait to bathe until she went up to to the birch to scratch and preen. Note: tanagers are overwing scratchers--they bring the leg behind and over the wing to scratch the face. So are hummingbirds. Raptors, parrots and waterfowl, to name just a few, are underwing scratchers. Just another little thing to notice and watch for...Hmm. What are woodpeckers? Doves? I can't remember. Must watch and see.
The wingbars are a function of the bird's youth. I'm not even sure this is a female, though her bathing habits might suggest as much.
When we go away, one of the things I ask our housesitters to do is to keep the bath full. Running out of seed or suet dough is no big deal, but on this dry ridge, water is the most precious commodity we offer the birds, and we take the responsibility seriously. If you do nothing else in your backyard, get some clean moving water going. The rewards, like the water, continually recirculate.