Another Tropical Migrant Arrives: Western Tanager on the Tuolumne Trail

These weeks of spring are when my personal favorite treasures arrive in the vicinity of the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail, and every walk is a little adventure when one of those treasures might be seen for the first time this year. This week the treasures included my first Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). For all their fiery color, they can be hard to spot because they prefer to hang about in the top of the canopy of the oak trees lining the trail. This one was no exception. You can't really tell from the camera perspective, but this male was almost directly overhead, craning his neck to look down at me.

The Western Tanager winters in Central America and Mexico, and in summer migrates farther north than any other tanager species. Very few other tanager species are ever even seen in my part of California. There are a lot of them that I am looking forward to seeing one day: Summer Tanager, Hepatic Tanager, maybe even a Scarlet Tanager. I'll have to spend time in Southern California or Arizona to even have a chance.

Meanwhile, the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail has finally been "discovered". The pandemic has of course (with great justification) severely limited people's ability to travel, and recreation opportunities have been highly restricted. Day by day I've noticed more and more people along the trail to the point that the parking lot that I thought was laughably large is almost full on weekends. The nice thing about the trail is that there are four or five different spots where people can go off the main trail and go down to the riverbank and spread out. Most people have been decent about maintaining the physical distancing. The only discouraging part is the increase in trash and garbage (come on people, you carried it in, you can carry it out), and the couple of airheads who think the trail is a motorcycle track, and that the river is appropriate for motorboats and jet-skis. It's so jarring to have one of those mechanical monsters go flying by (and not to mention extremely dangerous; I'm surprised no one has been hurt yet).