Scarlet Tanager PS

Scarlet Tanager PS
By – 4:35 pm
The Scarlet Tanager is still present an hour later at 4:30 p.m. today in the two eucalyptus trees on either side of the green picnic table that’s immediately to the north northwest of the drinking fountain, the same trees it was in for a long period of time Monday evening. The bird is eating bees and moths but is very lethargic and it could easily escape detection for long periods of time if there isn’t an army of people staring up in the tree, all checking. I could see that it would be particularly a problem if it’s breezy and the branches are moving. The bird did come down to the water fountain today as well to drink, but only for 30 seconds.As one will be able to see in looking at various people’s eBird list photos, the bird is fairly rapidly molting plumage, with the green and yellow blotches on it today being even larger than they were on Monday, which in turn were more obvious than they were a week earlier when the bird was first found.Also present near the drinking fountain and the ball field today is a basic plumaged Chipping Sparrow, which is quite early for a migrant to have arrived here.Paul Lehman, San DiegoSent from the all new AOL app for Android