Observers: Chris Howard
Email: chris93514@gmail.com
Remote Name: 65.244.205.238
Date: 11/22/2006
Time: 06:05 PM -0500
22 Nov 2006, I just got back from Douglas' house, where Douglas and I had great views of his Western Tanager, not an Orchard Oriole, but still a darn good find this late in fall. According to the Heindel Inyo Graphs, this is the second latest fall record ever. The latest is 13 Dec 1975; there are only a handful of October records. The tanager came down from a Cottonwood tree behind Douglas' house into his grape arbor. It fed on grapes in plain view at 20 ft for a minute or so. No photos taken. The bird had uniform yellow below extending up into the face, wrapping around to the rump and upper tail coverts. Back was dark olive, unstreaked, much darker than the yellow underparts. Dark gray wings with 2 wingbars, the upper appeared yellowish compared with the white lower wing bar. The bill was pretty thick and stubby, although tubular, and quite yellow especially at the base of the lower mandible. The upper and lower surfaces of the tail were black. Thank you Douglas for reporting another beautiful and noteworthy bird!