Hepatic Tanager in Louisiana!
On Monday morning, an exciting message came through LaBird, the Louisiana listserv, and LA RBA, the state’s groupme: David Muth and John Nelson had found a Hepatic Tanager on Grand Isle!
Hepatic Tanagers have a restricted range within the United States although they are widespread in tropical lowlands outside the Amazon Basin. These southern birds are brighter and might be better considered as two additional species based on vocal and molecular work. The US birds, including all extralimital records, come from the northernmost subspecies group. They are summer residents of mountains in Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas, and into Colorado, where they use pine-oak woodlands. Hepatics have a history of wandering, both in spring and in winter, with scattered records as far as Saskatchewan and Montreal. Michigan’s upper peninsula even boasts two records, from 2015 and 2017-2018. Louisiana also has two historical records, collected within 100 yards of one another in May of 1982 and May of 1983 at Peveto Woods in Cameron Parish. In the meantime, despite many careful observers checking every Summer Tanager they encounter, there have been no documented reports.
David and John changed that on Monday, capturing photos and audio recordings of a beautiful young male type in a small tract of oaks on Grand Isle run by The Nature Conservancy. Hepatics differ in a number of ways from the expected Summer Tanager. They sport a thinner, darkey bill and have more gray tones throughout their plumage, especially on the face. While the rest of the USA’s Piranga tanagers have multi-syllabic call notes, like the summer tanger’s oft-heard “pick-a-tuck”, Hepatics give a simple, but musical, “chup”. Grand Isle has recorded at least 318 bird species, incredible given its relative isolation and its size (6 x 0.5 miles). Two of those new birds have been this week, the tanager and a one-day wonder Cassin’s Kingbird.
Most of the time, when a rarity like this is found on the coast on a weekday, I have to live vicariously through others. In this case, though, the bird was refound in the morning on Tuesday, October 17th. I asked around but nobody was able to drop commitments that day to chase the bird two and a half hours from Baton Rouge. When I found out my afternoon class was just an optional lab session, I grabbed my camera, changed pants, and headed for the coast. My friend Jack has a family fishing camp down there where he was staying the night to get the Hepatic and bird the next day. I’d planned to do the same.
I got to the LSU Tract, where the bird had been continuing for Jack just minutes before, right around 5pm. I refreshed myself on Hepatic Tanager call notes in the car, as I haven’t heard one in person since May in Arizona. I wandered the small, unusually well maintained trail back and forth, kicking up a Northern Waterthrush but not much else. The Hepatic was nowhere to be found. The LSU tract abuts a cemetery with a line of picturesque Live Oaks in the back. Stepping between rows of above-ground graves, the standard in Louisiana, I reached the back of the cemetery, where Jack had the bird before he left to check other sites. I thought I heard the Hepatic to my west, just once, but without it calling again I was unsure. After a few more minutes without a passerine in sight, I made another loop through the woods and up and down the adjacent roads. I checked the cemetery again and tried squeaking, doing my best impression of a Hepatic Tanager call note. The bird called back and I squeaked a couple more times. It wasn’t moving, so I moved around to see where it was. It was about 20 feet up a live oak, sitting still and munching on an anole.
I watched the bird dispatch and consume its lizard prey, then it moved around the oak and started moving down the street. It perched near the top of an oak in dead branches that allowed continued study. It was “chup”ing a lot but mostly just sitting still, apparently surveying its new territory. I moved around to get the falling sun into a better position and was able to capture some photos I quite like before the bird was displaced by a rude mockingbird. I squeaked and it reappeared, then I spent another 10 minutes just observing as it moved from tree to tree.
I was lucky to get some close and nearly unobscured views of this dapper rarity
Eventually, it flew to the west, and I could hear it’s ringing “chup” calls as I walked back to my car.
One special thing about Louisiana is that you often have even the rarest birds all to yourself. There isn’t a particularly large chasing community, so chases, especially in the afternoon, are often solo. While the social scene is perhaps my favorite part of chasing rarities, I’ll treasure these moments alone with the Hepatic Tanager forever.
Because the bird was so cooperative and I had lots I really shouldn’t miss in Baton Rouge in the morning, I decided to head back to town after making quick checks of a couple spots on the island. It was a long out and back, but worth it.