Flame-colored tanager appearance in Milwaukee County, a first for the state, delights birders

CUDAHY – Twenty people clustered at noon Sunday on the edge of the Lake Michigan cliff at Sheridan Park.

There, perched 50 feet above the shoreline, they had a commanding view of the inland sea.

But their cameras and binoculars were trained on a 1-ounce feathered visitor feasting in foliage between the bluff and beach.

It was a flash mob, birder style.

"Oh, there she is!" said Sue Kulinski of Racine, raising her camera to her eye. "Hello, beautiful."

Kulinski and the others gathered to view a flame-colored tanager.

It was no ordinary birding outing – it was the first sighting of the species in Wisconsin, according to records of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology.

The bird, native to Mexico and Central America, has been spotted in only two other states, Arizona and Texas, according to eBird, a bird recording system operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

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Husband-and-wife Doug and Jessica Crofton of St. Francis first spotted and photographed the bird at 5 p.m. Saturday.

Avid birders, they had been at Warnimont Park and stopped by Sheridan Park "on a whim," Doug Crofton said.

The female flame-colored tanager showed itself near the top of the bluff. Initially Crofton thought it might be a pine warbler, one of the many species of songbirds migrating through southeastern Wisconsin in recent days.

Birders reach out for help with identification, and then the word spread

But when the couple got home and looked at photos they had collected, they knew it was different from anything they had seen locally. They then entered images on Merlin ID, a digital bird identification system, which suggested the bird was a western tanager.

"I was excited about that," Crofton said.

He, and the regional birding community, was about to get even more excited.

Crofton reached out late Saturday to Mark Korducki of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology and Jacob Collison, a local bird expert and photographer, for help with the bird's identification.

Within hours both agreed it wasn't a western tanager, which would have been rare enough for Wisconsin.

Instead they said it was the rarest of all sightings in the Badger State: a flame-colored tanager, the first in state history.

By early Sunday word of the unprecedented find spread through the Wisconsin Birding Network email list and various social media accounts.

About 6 a.m. Sunday it was relocated in the same area of Sheridan Park, a slim band of vegetation growing in the margin below the cliff.

Jeff and Lori Sundberg traveled to Cudahy from their home in Grayslake, Illinois, to try to see the rarity.

"I looked for it 12 years ago in Arizona and didn't find it," Jeff Sundberg said. "And here it is."

Flame-colored tanager usually lives in forested mountains in its native range

The bird, a female, seemed undaunted by the attention. It flitted among emerging leaves, flowers and catkins and fed on midges and other insects.

The flame-colored tanager is about 8 inches long, has a 12-inch wingspan and weighs slightly more than 1 ounce, according to the Sibley Guide to Birds. It's named after the bright orange feathers on the male's head, throat and chest.

It belongs to the family of birds including the cardinals, grosbeaks and buntings.

The species spends most of its time in pine-oak forests in mountains in its native range.

"It's a ways off," said Jeff Kingery of Mukwonago, who with his wife, Becky Alsup Kingery, came to see the tanager. "But the reason it's right here is habitat."

Sheridan Park is part of the Milwaukee County Parks System.

Much of the property is kept in turf grass for playing fields. But the strip of foliage along the Lake Michigan shore provides critical stopover habitat for all sorts of migrating birds, typical and otherwise.

In intermittent drizzle Sunday it was alive with birds jumping and feeding from branch to branch. Species included black-and-white, black-throated green and yellow-rumped warblers as well as black-capped chickadee and gray catbird. An Iceland gull, seldom seen in Wisconsin, was spotted flying over the beach.

But the lion's share of attention was focused on the flame-colored tanager.

For almost all, it was a "lifer."

The site arguably provided the best of both worlds: the birders could get relatively close looks as the tanager hunted and fed, often 30- to 45-feet away; and the bluff provided the bird protection from potential harassment. When it needed to it could fly down the slope or away from the crowd with only green space and Lake Michigan to the east.

About 100 people came throughout the day to view the bird, according to Crofton, who returned to the park Sunday.

"This is a great bird," Crofton said. "And one I didn't even know existed before this weekend. I'm so happy people are able to see it and I hope it fares well for as long as it's here and wherever it goes next."