Summer tanager pays surprise visit to Bangor

A rare sighting of a hopelessly out-of-range summer tanager preceded our first big snowstorm of the season last week.

Tanagers are large (7 to 12 inches in length) woodland songbirds. There are four breeding species in North America: the summer, scarlet, hepatic and western tanagers. Of these, the scarlet tanager is the only one that breeds in the Northeast.

In contrast, the summer tanager’s breeding range is far from Maine, extending only as far north as southern New Jersey and southern portions of Pennsylvania here in the East. It migrates to Central America and South America for the winter, so you can imagine the surprise of seeing it in Maine in December.

The first person to see it was Kenneth Maher, who noticed the bird visiting feeders outside his office near Bangor International Airport. Although he didn’t know what it was, he realized the bird was different from the usual “locals.”

“I wasn’t even one of the main bird-watchers in the building. I called people over, and at one point I had five or six people in my office looking at this bird,” he said. “It was pretty exciting there for a while.”

Co-worker Della Gleason had recently taken up birding and began investigating, along with others in the office.

Gleason studied the bird identification guides and did some searching on the Internet. It was relatively easy to narrow down the choices; the bird was large, drab-olive in color, with faint orange tints on her throat and flanks, and had a distinctive thick bill.

She then contacted Judy Markowsky at the Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden. She spread the word to others. Several Maine Audubon members were graciously invited to Gleason’s office to check the bird out, and confirmed that it was, indeed, an “eastern type” female summer tanager.

“Summer tanagers are reported about every other year,” Markowsky said. “They stray to the Northeast quite regularly, but it’s the first I’ve seen in Maine.”

In the meantime, Gleason had entered the sighting into the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “eBird” database. She recalled with a chuckle:

“After a few minutes, a message came back questioning my entry, emphasizing that this bird is not expected in Maine, and asking me to confirm my report,” she said.

Because the bird had been verified by others, she felt confident to send back: “Confirmed.”

The summer tanager remained in the area for a week despite frigid temperatures. Although insectivorous and fruit-eating, she had to take advantage of what was available, and consumed copious amounts of suet.

Luckily, I was able to see the bird. Feathers fluffed to their fullest extent against the cold, she struggled against the gusts of wind. She’d visit the suet feeder, then fly down to the ground amongst the leaves, where she blended right in. We wondered if she was trying to find warmth there. I left some oranges and blueberries for her, and Della later reported that she had started gulping the fruit even before the person had finished emptying the package onto the feeder.

Then the storm hit, and Gleason reports the bird hasn’t been seen since.

We all wondered why the bird had ended up in Maine. Had she been blown off-course? Did she have a faulty navigational system that led her astray? We’ll never know. One thing is certain – her disappearance has caused some concern among those who first discovered her.

“I like to think she caught a southerly wind that took her where she needed to go,” Maher said.

Chris Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com