FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] summer tanager foraging

["Rikki Hall" <rikki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was just treated to a close-up view of a male summer tanager.  He was
right outside the window of my (home) office, on the front porch rail,
giving a throaty "chuck" call, not the multisyllabic, staccato calls I
hear more often.

What was he up to?  Eating wasps!  I watched him flutter up and grab a
paper wasp off its nest, only to drop it.  I think he retrieved it from
the ground, but my view was blocked.  Next he fluttered up and came down
with a chunk from an old hornet nest, which he turned over a few times
looking for something edible.  He left it on the rail, and I can see where
it came from.  It seems to be the beginning layers of a nest that was
started and abandoned.  He continued to examine the underside of my porch
roof and made several more lunges at things that caught his interest.

As I was typing this, I saw his mate darting between trees in the yard.

Though summer tanagers have nested in my yard all three years I've lived
here, I rarely hear them sing.  I hear calls all the time.  The other
morning I happened to be awake around 5:30am and heard him singing.  When
I stepped outside, I could just barely hear another male countersinging
from the farm across the road.

Rikki Hall
Rockford, TN
Blount Co.

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