Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Summer Tanager


Today we were treated to a rare visitor from afar. A Summer Tanager has been coming to feeders at a house in French Creek since at least the 17th of November. According to neighbors, it may have been there for over a month. This is the first record of this species for the Parksville-Qualicum Bird Checklist Area, and apparently also the first for Vancouver Island. I did look into a report of one in Nanaimo about ten years ago, but details were sketchy at best, and we never were able to confirm it.
Thanks to Russell Cannings for posting this bird on his provincial bird alert site. Had I not noticed it there this morning, I never would have heard about it. To make matters even more weird, it turns out that the bird is coming to a friends house, and he assumed I would have already heard about it. Yeah. Crazy days in crazyville? Yep.

2 comments:

Scott Gilmore said...

Glad you got the bird. I will have to try again tomorrow!

Abu Anka said...

Sorry you didn't get it Scott. We missed it the first time, and we were there about three hours. It didn't take long at all the second time, and it showed very well every few minutes all afternoon.
Hope you see it next time, and good seeing you today.