A 15-year-old Pine Bluff girl who gained interest in birding less than four months ago has identified a second bird rare to Arkansas in as many months.
While photographing birds along Grider Field Road on April 27, Katlynne Johnson captured images of a bird she could not immediately identify, her mother Celeste said. Katlynne initially thought the bird might be a scarlet tanager, which according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a medium-sized songbird with “fairly stocky proportions.” The relative size of a scarlet tanager — 6.3 to 6.7 inches weighing 0.8 to 1.3 ounces with a wingspan of 9.8 to 11.4 inches — is slightly smaller than a Northern cardinal, but larger than a yellow warbler, according to the lab.
When comparing the bird’s field marks and comparing photographs, however, Katlynne began to suspect it was a Western tanager, a bird much rarer to Arkansas. A summer tanager can be seen in Arkansas all year but is more common between April and October, according to BirdAdvisors.com. Since 2021, only three sightings of Western tanagers have been reported in the areas surrounding Fayetteville, Hot Springs Village and Murfreesboro, according to the Cornell Lab, whereas they are heavily visible across the Western U.S. Sightings of Western tanagers are sparse from Oklahoma and east Texas eastward but are more common along the Eastern Seaboard.
Katlynne, a ninth-grader at the Arkansas River Education Service Cooperative’s Virtual Academy at the River, had identified a Vermilion flycatcher near her home March 13, just one month after she began birding in the Great Backyard Bird Count, a global birding event. Vermilion flycatchers are native to the Southwestern U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America…