{"id":53916,"date":"2018-09-02T04:53:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T10:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=53916"},"modified":"2025-09-08T08:42:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:42:16","slug":"female-western-tanager-in-morgan-county-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2018\/09\/02\/female-western-tanager-in-morgan-county-utah\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Western Tanager in Morgan County, Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Female Western Tanager<\/h2>\n

\"FemaleFemale Western Tanager in a Serviceberry – Nikon D500, f7.1, 1\/1250, ISO 800, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

On August 24th I had an opportunity to photograph this female Western Tanager out in the open perched on a Utah Serviceberry<\/span><\/a> for a second or two. I had seen her fly into the shrub and watched as she made her way through the foliage for several minutes, I kept hoping she would show her full body and when she did eventually and I was ready.<\/p>\n

I’ve only had a few opportunities with Western Tanagers this season and most of the time the birds were either too buried in the leaves of trees to get clear, full body shots or when they were out in the open they took off before I could even focus on them.<\/p>\n

That is simply a part of being a bird photographer, our subjects have wings and they do whatever they want to do.<\/p>\n

Western Tanagers do eat fruit but their primary diet during the breeding season consists primarily of insects such as bees, wasps, termites, ants, dragonflies, caterpillars, cicadas, stinkbugs, grasshoppers and hornets.<\/p>\n

This female tanager appeared to be looking for insects not fruits as she made her way through the bush.\u00a0 Her crouching posture may have been because she was out in the open, because there had been repeated flyovers by a Cooper’s Hawk that morning and she was wary.<\/p>\n

\"CloseClose up of a female Western Tanager with a Bald-faced Hornet – Nikon D500, f7.1, 1\/320, ISO 800, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the same female Western Tanager as shown in the first photo above and there was a time gap of 18 minutes between these images. Since I had been keeping one eye on her as she foraged in the clump of fruit trees so when just her head popped out of the leaves I could see that she had captured a Bald-faced Hornet in her bill.<\/p>\n

She was fun to photograph.<\/p>\n

Life is<\/em> good.<\/p>\n

Mia<\/p>\n

Click here<\/span><\/a> to see more of my Western Tanager photos plus facts and information about this species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 24th I had an opportunity to photograph this female Western Tanager out in the open perched on a Utah Serviceberry for a second or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4594,26,773,2126],"tags":[6523,3940,4070,5370,4069,4103,2315,6761,6762,6522,4102],"class_list":["post-53916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian","category-morgan-county","category-utah","category-wasatch-mountains","category-western-tanager-tanagers","tag-amelanchier-utahensis","tag-canyon","tag-female","tag-forest","tag-mountains","tag-piranga-ludoviciana","tag-summer-3","tag-tanager","tag-tanagers","tag-utah-serviceberry","tag-western-tanager"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/western-tanager-female-mia-mcpherson-9149.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p11Mom-e1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":102638,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2022\/05\/25\/female-western-tanager-perched-on-a-juniper\/","url_meta":{"origin":53916,"position":0},"title":"Female Western Tanager Perched On A Juniper","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"May 25, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday morning I spent time photographing a female Western Tanager perched on a juniper in a canyon out in the sky island mountains of the West Desert of Utah.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Female Western Tanager perched on a juniper, West Desert, Tooele County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/western-tanager-adult-female-juniper-mia-mcpherson-8495.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/western-tanager-adult-female-juniper-mia-mcpherson-8495.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, 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Tanager in the Wasatch Mountains, Morgan County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/western-tanager-immature-gambels-oak-mia-mcpherson-1134.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/western-tanager-immature-gambels-oak-mia-mcpherson-1134.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/western-tanager-immature-gambels-oak-mia-mcpherson-1134.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/western-tanager-immature-gambels-oak-mia-mcpherson-1134.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":72686,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2020\/08\/15\/western-tanager-photos-from-this-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":53916,"position":2},"title":"Western Tanager Photos From This Week","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"August 15, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"On four out of five trips up into the Wasatch Mountains this week I've been able to take images of immature and female Western Tanagers","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":59547,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2019\/08\/16\/photographing-some-of-the-birds-i-love-in-the-wasatch-mountains\/","url_meta":{"origin":53916,"position":3},"title":"Photographing Some Of The Birds I Love In The Wasatch Mountains","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"August 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"As a bird photographer I'm feeling a sense of urgency now that I didn't feel a few weeks ago because as I watch the migrants in the Wasatch Mountains getting ready for their long journeys I know that my time for photographing them this year is quickly running out.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Immature MacGillivray's Warbler on a serviceberry branch, Wasatch Mountains, Morgan County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/macgillivrays-warbler-immature-serviceberry-mia-mcpherson-1041.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/macgillivrays-warbler-immature-serviceberry-mia-mcpherson-1041.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/macgillivrays-warbler-immature-serviceberry-mia-mcpherson-1041.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, 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2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It was fun to have the male and immature Western Tanager in my viewfinder for a few moments high in the Wasatch Mountains last week. I hope I see more soon.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Immature Western Tanager tilting its head, Wasatch Mountains, Summit County, Utah","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/western-tanager-immature-perched-mia-mcpherson-2498.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/western-tanager-immature-perched-mia-mcpherson-2498.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/western-tanager-immature-perched-mia-mcpherson-2498.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/western-tanager-immature-perched-mia-mcpherson-2498.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}