The male western tanager is not a bird one could even remotely stand a chance of confusing with a breeding plumaged male of our familiar scarlet tanager. To start, it’s bright yellow over most of its body, not the intense red of the male scarlet tanager. The western tanager also, even the less-flashy female plumage, always sports wingbars on the otherwise black wings. Western tanagers, as the name implies, breed in the western U.S. and western Canada and winter from Mexico south to Central America. But every late-fall and winter, a few show up in the eastern U.S., often finding their way to a backyard feeder. This year, a western tanager was found in the first week of December in Biddeford where a treasure trove of unusual late-lingering warblers had been hanging out. We once discovered a western tanager that was even more out-of-range—a male on the island of Bonaire (off South America) in July when it should have been thousands of miles to the North!

In November we went on a fruitless search at the Viles Arboretum in Augusta for another western bird that had been spotted there the previous day. It was a Townsend’s solitaire. Like the western tanager, this species nests in the western U.S. and Canada, occurring all the way north across Yukon and into interior Alaska but with breeding populations all the way south into Mexico. You may remember that we wrote about the species once before after finding one on the Matinicus Island Christmas Bird Count a few years back. Again, this is a species in which a few individuals find their way eastward every fall and winter.

There are some others, too, that show this pattern and that birders should be on the lookout for.  The western form of the dark-eyed junco—the “Oregon” dark-eyed junco—is one that is found more regularly than most western dark-eyed junco varieties. It breeds from British Columbia south to California and normally goes only eastward as far as the Great Plains for the winter. One of these was found and photographed in early December at Reid State Park.

Although none have been sighted this year in Maine as far as we know, the varied thrush is one of our favorites among these “west meets east” birds. Varied thrushes look, to us, like an exotic robin, with an orange eyeline and orange bars and marks in the wings. They nest from Alaska south through Yukon and British Columbia to Oregon and winter along the Pacific Coast to southern California and Mexico’s Northern Baja. As an aside, if you ever get to visit their breeding grounds you’ll be entranced by their ethereal and simple song—a single, haunting, long whistle repeated about 10 seconds later by another on a slightly varied pitch. Unfortunately we don’t get to hear that song from the birds that occasionally go east and end up, rarely but fairly regularly, in our area.

Over the Thanksgiving break we were down in the Portland area and watched from a window the Casco Bay ferries going back and forth to the islands. We reminisced about the time, years ago (30 years ago, in fact), that we huddled together on a freezing cold ferry ride out to Cliff Island in Casco Bay to see the state’s first documented golden-crowned sparrow. Since then, the only ones we have seen have been in California and Washington State where they are supposed to be in winter!

If you find a “westerner” in our midst, photograph it, enjoy it—and be prepared to travel if you want to see one again soon!

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of the Birder’s Conservation Handbook. His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, Maine’s Favorite Birds.