Male White-lined Tanager, courtesy of John Beer

We don’t really seem to have the scrubby habitat that the literature associates with this bird, and it’s true that it’s an infrequent visitor here at the house.  What you can be sure of, however, is that there’ll always be two of them.  This makes identification really easy, although when the male flies, the white line in the wing is a dead give-away.  The handsome, almost chestnut female would perhaps be harder to pin down if she weren’t always in the company of her mate.  They cheered up a rainy day today, coming consistently to the feeder for bananas.

The female White-lined Tanager at nearby Santa Rosa, courtesy of John Beer

The White-shouldered tanager, the male of which might be confused with the White-lined, is said to be a common Caribbean resident reaching 1000 m, but I haven´t seen even a hint of one despite several trips to the Caribbean coast.

On a sadder note, another collision with our windows killed a beautiful female Hoffman’s woodpecker.  I’d welcome any suggestions about how to stop these accidents.  Do the falcon silhouettes really work?