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Summer tanager makes rare visit to western Massachusetts

A summer tanager visits a bird feeder in Sunderland, Massachusetts.
Scott Surner
/
Courtesy
A summer tanager visits a bird feeder in Sunderland, Massachusetts.

A couple of birds not usually seen in Massachusetts showed up in recent days. A sea eagle was spotted last week in Dighton Rock State Park on the Taunton River. In western Massachusetts, a summer tanager has been seen in Sunderland.

Unlike the scarlet tanager, which breeds in New England in the warmer months, the summer tanager is rarely seen in this region. It breeds south and west of here and migrates to Central and South America for the winter.

According to the Cornell Lab or Ornithology, the males are the only completely red bird in North America. The female is mostly yellow.

Scott Surner, a birder from Belchertown, said this was a young bird and it wasn't clear from the feathers yet whether it's male or female.

"It's kind of a yellowy-green, little hints of orange in there," Surner said. "It's a noticeable bird when you see it. It's not something you would normally see at your feeding station."

Young birds without a lot of experience migrating are more likely to get off track, which may explain why it traveled to western Massachusetts.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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