Summer Tanager

We saw Summer Tanagers (Piranga rubra) several times during this trip.  

With the camera I use, I can barely imagine being able to get photos like these of the male Summer Tanager again.  I was pleased with them.

*I added the above Google-made movie thinking that it would work on this blog.   It doesn't work.  Too bad.  It included some fun photos taken along our Summer Tanager road that I am unlikely to use otherwise. Curiously, the Google-made animated images that I included in the previous blog entry do work.  Given how much personal information we now know has been collected on us by both Facebook and Google, I probably shouldn't be using this stuff.  But I feel sort of complacent - the cat seems so completely out of the bag.  

On a different day at a different location, above and below, this female Summer Tanager had some sort of tumor on its side.  The growth did not seem to impair its flight. Nevertheless, it seemed the growth would harm its chances for a successful migration.

Tanagers are an interesting group of birds.  Not only are there a lot of them, the tanagers and allies category also include hemispinguses, honeycreepers, dacnises, conebills, flowerpiercers and others.  Summer tanagers, scarlet tanagers and a few others belong with the cardinals and allies category.  Makes we want to study the tanager family more.