Tanager bonanza in 1995

[Rosie Watts]

Hi, Cobirders!  

    It's been a long time since we've posted (having moved out of Colorado in 2002).    But I still enjoy perusing the digest, and reading items of  interest.  

   The tanager extravaganza y'all have been experiencing this year, put me in mind of a similar episode in 1995.   I don't have exact dates, but I know it was in May of that year.   We were living in Penrose (Fremont County), and we had a couple weeks of cool/occasionally wet weather, and very low cloud fronts (if memory serves me correctly, they were actually above the clouds up in Salida and Westcliffe).

  I had a particularly nasty virus of some kind that month, that left me home lying on the couch for most of two weeks.   The saving grace was the incredible influx of Western Tanagers, Bullock's Orioles, and Black-headed Grosbeaks.   Whenever I'd wake from my fevered couch-napping, I'd drag myself to the kitchen, and cut up more watermelons, bananas, cantaloupe and oranges, which we'd place on the patio on big plates.   They devoured all the offerings within a few hours each time.  It was such a fun sight (and a great diversion from the viral malaise!).  

 We've had a "cooler" May here in Tucson, and more Western Tanagers than usual in our yard, but nothing like the Front Range Tanager Tour this spring.  

Thanks for all the great posts about the tanager invasion this spring.  

Happy Birding!   Rosie Watts, Tucson