If all goes well around here at Intrigued, the bird counter should pretty much be free spinning well into next month. Most of those additions will be coming from the Texas coastline. Pretty sure I already made posts from our first trip to Galveston Island back in November 2013. I recently completed processing all of the shots from our Christmas trip down to South Padre Island last year. Those shots will be featured for most of the posts over the next several weeks. I need to get through those by mid February in order to focus on all the new blog fodder put in the tin on our recent trip back to Padre and then over to the Mission region on the Rio Grande. Texas has become a biding nirvana for me – each trip has produced multitudes of +1’s. A surprising number of those being absolutely gorgeous birds.
One thing for sure, the Peterson Field Guide I use for my field reference does not do this bird justice. At the time I had no idea what kind of bird it was. It was definitely smaller than a Cardinal although it did sport a spiky tuft of a crown. I did not boost the saturation of this bird, although the overcast feel of the day did give it more of a natural pop against the duller background. The Summer Tanager was the next option, but even that species is pretty much duller red all over and seemed stockier than this specimen- see my previous reference (link here). Hmmm – staying in that arena, it did have a feel of Scarlet Tanager which is definitely closer to the red hue along with the darker wing coloring. The definite robber mask set this one apart from that. My previous Scarlet reference is of a water logged specimen, but you can see that here (link here). (Note, I do have a better Scarlet in the queue, just need to find some time to get it posted).
Hit the jump to see more images of this bird and, of course, learn what it is if you haven’t seen one before.
