Western Tanager in Kennebunk ME on Jan 3rd.

I posted briefly about my adventures finding and photographing a Western Tanager that has been hanging out with a flock of Robins in a neighborhood a little less than a mile from my home in Kennebunk Maine. Actually, “refinding” is better…it was seen twice on the Kennebunk Christmas Bird Count on December 27th, but I did not hear about it until the day before yesterday. A Western Tanager in Maine is news anytime, but you would think that late December and early January would be among the most unlikely times. You would think…but, in fact, the last record of Western Tanager in Maine that I can find was also on a Christmas Bird Count in Bangor in 2006. Western Tanagers breed all along the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, on both sides, west to the coast and east to the great plains, and are supposed to migrate to extreme southern Baha California, and from northern Mexico south as far as Costa Rica in the winter. They are not supposed to be in Maine. There are always a few birds in any migrating species that get their internal compass turned around and head the wrong way. The Tanager in Maine undoubtedly started out for Mexico. There is a remote chance that if the food holds out it could actually survive winter in Maine…or, when food gets scarce, that it will follow the flock of Robins to better foraging not far from us, or even higher in the mountains. Robins, despite the “first Robin of Spring” thing are not long distance migrants…in fact they are year-round residents of coastal Maine and most of the US. They are just less visible, and certainly less vocal, in winter. Only time will tell the fate of the Western Tanager foraging with them.

The most critical time for the Tanager, if it survives the Maine winter, will be next spring, when it is time to go home. Chances of its clearly defective guidance system getting it all the way back across the full width of the continent to its breeding areas in the mountains of the west are, realistically, pretty slim.

Although they are no more slim, come right down to it, than the chances of its being in Maine in January in the first place. 🙂

As strange and wonderful as the presence of the bird is, I have to wonder what the good folks who happen to live in the quiet little back street neighborhood in Kennebunk must think about the sudden influx of people with binoculars and cameras. People who stand in the middle of the street looking up into the trees and poke their binos and lenses into back yards…serious expectant people most of the time…but also excited, highly animated…obviously joyful people from time to time. They must look out their windows and wonder what in the world they are missing. Even if they see the Robin flock, which is pretty hard to miss, they are unlikely to pick out the one odd bird among them. And I am sure not a few of them are already tired of strangers, and strange behavior, on their streets.

I have thought before this about how much birding is like a religion…a fellowship of the initiated and the aware…a community with a common focus and a common language…a shared source of joy. I first started looking for the Tanager because I observed obvious birder behavior on my drive up my street and stopped to find out what was going on. I knew I was missing something and had to find out what it was.

I would like to have a faith so strong some day that people who saw my obvious excitement and joy in living would wonder what they were missing. Someday. And more than that, I hope that every time I find myself as far from my spiritual home as the Western Tanager is from his physical one, I will find a flock of Robins of the faith who know where the food is. 🙂

Happy Sunday!