Western Tanager.....No.24, Crossed Wing Collection

A friend who guided fly-fisherman in the Yellowstone area said he'd seen flocks of Western Tanagers along the Madison River. We had lived there a year and had yet to see one. We'd seen just about every bird that was to be expected, but not this brightly colored one listed in the books as a "common breeder". Then one day, while hiking and looking for nothing in particular, a male flew into a view and perched. We were thrilled.

Tanagers are primarily tropical. Of over two hundred species only four breed in the U.S., and this one that we were looking at was in a setting as far removed from the tropics as you can get - lodgepole pine and Englemann spruce, talus slopes, goose down jackets and snow in July. Today we were glad that Western Tanagers had a sense of adventure.