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Updated: May 5, 2025
Many are almost unrecognisable in their new winter plumage. Male scarlet tanagers are now green tanagers, goldfinches are olive finches, while instead of the beautiful black, white, and cream dress which made so easy the identification of the meadow bobolinks in the spring, search will now be rewarded only by some plump, overgrown sparrows reedbirds which are really bobolinks in disguise.
Close behind him came a pair of tanagers. The female Tory did not recognize until Memory Frean explained that she was a dull green olive in color, unlike her brilliant, scarlet-coated husband. In fact, Tory and Miss Frean did not go indoors until, from somewhere deep in the woods, a whippoorwill began his evening call.
The summery call of a turtle dove came dreamily through the forest; while nearer, towhees filled the place with their "fine explosive trills." Down in the ravine chats were uttering their strange notes, so weird that they won from the Indians the name of "ghost bird." Vireos and tanagers vied with each other in persistent singing.
We left Castillo at daylight the next morning, and continued our journey up the river. Its banks presented but little change. We saw many tall graceful palms and tree ferns, but most of the trees were dicotyledons. Screaming macaws, in their gorgeous livery of blue, yellow, and scarlet, occasionally flew overhead, and tanagers and toucans were not uncommon.
In May the principal birds of our neighbourhood will return thrushes, vireos, tanagers, grosbeaks, bobolinks, orioles. The game birds quail, partridge, meadowlarks and pheasants do not migrate as a rule. At least they do not disappear for a time and then return. When they leave a neighbourhood, they rarely come back to it. All the song birds begin nesting in May.
There were warblers, cardinals, tanagers, waxwings, song-sparrows, and chickadees. Flitting droves of bush-tit dropped on to slender weeds, scarcely bending them, so light were they. Then in a minute they were gone. In the swamps or marshes were countless red-winged blackbirds. The most unobservant person could not help but see birds here.
Two or three rose-breasted grossbeaks piped their liquid, childlike arias; towhees, at least a half-dozen of them, flung forth their loud, explosive trills that have a real musical quality; several cardinals whistled as if they meant to drown out all the other voices; scarlet and summer tanagers drawled their good-natured tunes, while their rich robes gleamed in the level rays of the rising sun; running like silver threads through all the other music, could be heard the fine trills of the field sparrows; the swinging chant of the creeping warblers and the loud rattle of the Tennessee warblers ran high up in the scale, furnishing a gossamer tenor; that golden optimist, the Baltimore oriole, piped his cheery recitative in the tops of the trees; chickadees supplied the minor strains and tufted titmice the alto; four or five turtle doves soothed the ear with their meditative cooing; while the calls and songs of numerous jays and a few yellow-breasted chats made a kind of trombone accompaniment.
"These Tanagers aren't very plenty about here are they, Doctor?" asked Rap. "Not now, my boy; their scarlet feathers are very handsome, and thoughtless, greedy people have shot so many in the nesting season, to sell for bonnet trimmings, that the family is growing small.
"The birds that you have been studying thus far, from the Bluebird, Robin, and Wood Thrush to the Tanagers, belong to several different families and are chiefly insect-eaters, taking various fruits and berries in season, it is true, but making insects their regular diet.
By the road side I had just passed Carolina wrens, house wrens, a chipper, a field sparrow, two thrashers, an abundance of chewinks, two orchard orioles, several tanagers, a flock of quail, and mocking-birds and cardinals uncounted. In a pine wood near by, a wood pewee, a pine warbler, a yellow-throated warbler, and a pine-wood sparrow were singing a most peculiarly select and modest chorus.
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