Rare Bird Sighted in Southeast Portland

I fell down a birding rabbit hole earlier this year after I heard about a flock of Portlanders at Southeast Taylor Street and 16th Avenue who were looking at a bird through binoculars. I relearned that the internet holds the answer to all things, including rare bird sightings.

A summer tanager is a brightly colored bird. It would appear the bird we spotted in southeast was female; they’re yellow. Mature males are bright red, often described as a strawberry color.

The summer tanager’s songs are high-noted tweets that sound like “pit-ti-tuck.” They are between a sparrow and a robin in size. They favor the tops of trees in the forest from which they go on brief insect-hunting forays.

Generally they live along a belt stretching from southern Pennsylvania through the southeast and across to southern Nevada and California. Usually the birds overwinter from Mexico to Bolivia.

Only the Western tanager is an Oregon native. Nonetheless, the exotic bird has been reported locally with some regularity.