Photo Provided by Helen Whited • A male summer tanager visits a feeder during a migration stop in southwest Virginia.
Helen Whited, a resident of Richlands, Virginia, recently emailed me a photo of a feathered visitor in her yard asking for help with identification. She had already narrowed down the possibilities. “I’m thinking a tanager of some kind,” Helen wrote in her email.
When I opened Helen’s attached photo file, I recognized the plump, red bird perched on her feeder near a suet cage. I wrote an email back, informing Helen that her visitor was indeed a tanager. The summer tanager is not rare, per se, but these birds do not seem as common in the region as the related and better known scarlet tanager. Farther south, summer tanagers are much more prevalent in the spring and summer months.
Helen also reported seeing her first ruby-throated hummingbird of spring on…
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