Jeff and Lori Sundberg traveled to Cudahy from their home in Grayslake, Illinois, to try to see the rarity. Sunday it was relocated in the same area of Sheridan Park, a slim band of vegetation growing in the margin below the cliff. Instead they said it was the rarest of all sightings in the Badger State: a flame-colored tanager, the first in state history.īy early Sunday word of the unprecedented find spread through the Wisconsin Birding Network email list and various social media accounts.Ībout 6 a.m. Within hours both agreed it wasn't a western tanager, which would have been rare enough for Wisconsin. He, and the regional birding community, was about to get even more excited.Ĭrofton 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. "I was excited about that," Crofton said. They then entered images on Merlin ID, a digital bird identification system, which suggested the bird was a western tanager. Birders reach out for help with identification, and then the word spreadīut when the couple got home and looked at photos they had collected, they knew it was different from anything they had seen locally. Initially Crofton thought it might be a pine warbler, one of the many species of songbirds migrating through southeastern Wisconsin in recent days. The female flame-colored tanager showed itself near the top of the bluff. Saturday.Īvid birders, they had been at Warnimont Park and stopped by Sheridan Park "on a whim," Doug Crofton said. Francis first spotted and photographed the bird at 5 p.m. Husband-and-wife Doug and Jessica Crofton of St. More: Smith: Wild turkey restoration adds rich dimension to spring in Wisconsin More: Six things to know about the Wisconsin state bird, the American robin 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. 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. Kulinski and the others gathered to view a flame-colored tanager. "Oh, there she is!" said Sue Kulinski of Racine, raising her camera to her eye. There, perched 50 feet above the shoreline, they had a commanding view of the inland sea.īut their cameras and binoculars were trained on a 1-ounce feathered visitor feasting in foliage between the bluff and beach. CUDAHY – Twenty people clustered at noon Sunday on the edge of the Lake Michigan cliff at Sheridan Park.
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