Timing is everything in birding and photography, and that was certainly true for Randy Mehoves in late April 2007, when he photographed the bright red Summer Tanager that appears on our June 2011 cover (right).
Randy was visiting Sabine Woods, a famous migrant trap and bird sanctuary on the Upper Texas Coast just west of the Louisiana border, during a weeks-long photography trip to High Island and other birding hotspots on the coast. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, orioles, tanagers, and other songbirds that had crossed the Gulf of Mexico were especially attracted to mulberry and oak trees at Sabine Woods, he recalls.
Summer Tanagers pass through the sanctuary in spring, peaking in mid- to late April. Only a handful are seen during fall migration in September and October.
"It seems the main attraction to hold the Summer Tanagers were several wild honeybee hives in the oak trees and an occasional large hatch of dragonflies, both of which the tanagers are quite fond of," Randy says.
"The day I took this image was nicely overcast, allowing me to shoot much later into the morning than usual. I took photos of warblers, cuckoos, orioles, and tanagers, including several Summer Tanagers that were quite accommodating."
"I was on my way out of the woods around noon when I spotted this male just sitting in an oak tree. I used my Canon 1D Mark II camera with a 500mm f/4 IS lens along with a 1.4x extender to isolate the tanager and fill flash to add some sparkle because of the overcast skies. The bird stayed in the same general location for about 30 minutes, allowing me to move about and work on different compositions."
And to think, after a full morning of filling his memory cards with photos, Randy could have walked past the bird and headed back to his car. Like I said, timing is everything.
A week or two later, he submitted the photo and a few others to us to consider for our Photo of the Week. We selected the tanager shot for the August 20, 2007, Photo of the Week, and then in our April 2008 issue, we published a different Summer Tanager image of his on our Table of Contents (paper magazine only). When it came time to pick a photo for our June 2011 cover, we looked at several pictures of tanagers and other migrants. Randy's shot stood out due to the bird's bright colors and incredible feather detail.
In September 2008, Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas-Louisiana coast, "killing all the mulberry trees and wiping out the wild honeybee hives in this little patch of woods," Randy notes.
By spring 2010, however, Sabine Woods, High Island, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, and other sites that had been hit hard by Ike had recovered significantly. In fact, Summer Tanager sightings reported to eBird show that more birds have been found at Sabine Woods in the years after Ike than before. --Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor
See the complete contents of the June 2011 issue.
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