Scarlet Tanager

On Saturday May 14th, I walked around the Eastman Nature Center hoping to find some migratory birds to photograph. I found a male Scarlet tanager in the trees that caught an insect. The Scarlet tanager is a bright colorful migratory songbird that is placed in the cardinal family. The Scarlet tanager migrates twice a year. They fly across the Gulf of Mexico to get to their breeding grounds in eastern North America and to their wintering grounds in South America.

A Scarlet tanager’s diet consists of insects such as moths, butterflies and spiders. It’s predators are long-eared/short-eared owls, merlin, etc. Predators for their young include blue jays, crows, squirrels, and snakes. An interesting fact is that in the summer and spring the tanager’s colors are bright red and black, but during the fall those get traded with yellow feathers.

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