As promised, WC will take a break from Tanagers for a while, and spend some time with bigger birds instead. Specifically, with Accipitridae, the world-wide family of birds sometimes called raptors, and at least to start, with Kites. When WC was just getting started in birding, it was a shock to learn that “kite” isn’t…

If WC has counted correctly, we’ve featured 25 weeks of Tanagers. And while we’re a long ways from exhausting tanagers – we haven’t touched on Mountain Tanagers yet, or tanagers that aren’t called “tanagers” – WC will move to a different family of birds next week. But let’s close out tanagers with a spang(le), specifically…

Not to be confused with the similarly colored but unrelated Vermillion Flycatcher, the Vermillion Tanager is a bird of the eastern slopes of the Andes. It’s another canopy species; this is another photo from a steep hillside, looking at downslope treetops. Yes, the shot was photobombed by a Golden-naped Tanager, but that’s a pretty good…

The Opal-crowned Tanager is a canopy dweller, spending its life in the upper third of mature jungle canopy in the mountain lowlands of Ecuador and Peru. The only times WC has seen it has been in a canopy tower, or on a steep hillside where a road give you a view of the downslope treetops.…

WC recently visited one of his favorite birding spots, Camas Prairie,1 to see what was around in early autumn. What wasn’t around was water; Camas Prairie and its birding centerpiece, Centennial Marsh, are seasonal wetlands. This late in the year, it was mostly dry to very dry. A few fields were flooded, but that was…

Yes, still with the tanagers. After all, there may be as many as 240 different species, although WC has so far photographed only a fraction of them.1 But staying with the silvery theme, meet the Silver-beaked Tanager. The bill is indeed bright silver, distinguishing the species from the Silver-backed Tanager and the Silver-throated Tanager. Maybe…

Not to be confused with the Silver-backed Tanager or the Silver-beaked Tanager, The Silver-throated Tanager is a bird of the highlands of Costa Rica and Panama and the cloud forests of the northern and central Andes in South America. The bird’s plumage is unusual beyond the silver throat. Not many Tangara species – the largest genus…