Western Tanager

Another day, another park in California… this time I was there looking for this bird and luckily I found it fluttering around in the tree tops.

These birds can be found from the northern parts of western Canada down south into Central America.

Take a closer look at this photo and you will see the insect which the bird is eating. I think it may be an ant or possibly a spider. Insects are their preferred diet, but they also eat fruits.

In the early part of the twentieth century, these birds were thought to pose a huge threat to the commercial fruit crops. In 1896 one person wrote that “the damage done to cherries in one orchard was so great that the sales of the fruit which was left did not balance the bills paid out for poison and ammunition.” Luckily today we have found ways to protect the fruit crops from birds and it is also illegal to shoot native birds, so the Western Tanagers are safer now!