Western Tanager

Western tanager in Mountain Lake willows, San Francisco, 2012.

Much has been written about the gorgeous western-US installment of the genus Piranga, the tanagers. I declare this my favorite genus of North American birds.

I found an article that summarizes, more thoroughly than I would have, what I wanted to summarize about the western tanager. I was curious about the Latin name Piranga ludoviciana. What did ludoviciana refer to? [In Latin scientific naming, the first, capitalized word is the genus, which many separate unique species can have -- but the second word, the species or specific name, narrows it down to a unique, individual kind of organism.] So, all tanagers are Piranga ___________ .

Scarlet tanager: Piranga olivacea

Summer tanager: Piranga rubra

Hepatic tanager: Piranga flava (seriously! NO, not referring to this guy -- apparently it means yellow. And I think hepatic means red...)

So -- ludoviciana is the Latin conversion for the word Louisiana. It refers to where the bird was first identified by Lewis and Clark. Not in the state of Louisiana as we know it today, but somewhere in the great expanse of the Louisiana Purchase. 

The handsome fellow above was foraging with a female, probably passing through to northward or eastward locales to breed. He was a welcome addition to my work of weeding in the restored vegetation at Mountain Lake in the Presidio.

Unlike the usual film, I should mention that this was shot with a DSLR.