Its a scarlet tanager kind of yearWritten by George Ellison “The
scarlet tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would
ignite the leaves. You can hardly believe that a living creature
can wear such colors.” — Henry David Thoreau This seems to be a
scarlet tanager kind of year. I’ve been seeing and hearing them
at my house, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and in the Great
Smokies. No bird in our region is more striking. Jet black wings
on a trim red almost luminescent body, the male is impossible to
overlook. And it’s easy to recognize by both song and call. I
almost never encounter the summer tanager (whose entire body is
rosy red) in Western North Carolina, but the scarlet tanager is
encountered every year — to a greater or lesser extent — during
the breeding season (mid-April to mid-October) in mature
woodlands (especially slopes with pine and oak) between 2,000
and 5,000 feet in elevation. The bird winters in northwestern
South America, where it enjoys the company of various tropical
tanagers that d