Length: About 5½ inches.
Male: Body glossy black, with a white belly, orange patches at the sides
of the body and under the wings; an orange band across the wings;
middle tail-feathers black; other tail-feathers broadly tipped with
black but largely orange, conspicuous in flight; bill with bristles.
Female: Gray and olive-green above, white underneath; yellow instead of
orange on sides, wings, tail, and under tail.
Young Male: Like female till end of first breeding season.
Nest: A beautiful structure made of strips of bark, root-fibers, and
plant-down, and placed in the fork of a tree. If built in a birch
sapling and decorated with bits of birch bark, it seems a part of
the tree.
Song: A cheerful trill, rather weak and unmusical.
Range: North America. Breeds from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina
northward; winters in the West Indies, central Mexico, and northern
South America.
The Redstart is one of the most beautiful and conspicuous of the
warblers. Its fan-shaped, flame-colored tail tipped with black is its
most distinctive mark. It is in almost constant motion, fluttering
incessantly in pursuit of its insect prey. Mr. Forbush writes, "In all
its movements its wings are held in readiness for instant flight, and in
its sinuous twistings and turnings, risings and fallings, its colors
expand, contract, and glow amid the sylvan shades like a dancing
torch."[145]
Like flycatchers, the redstart has bristles at the base of its bill,
which makes the capture of a great variety of insects an easy matter. It
has been named the "flycatcher of the inner treetops, but it is a
flycatcher of the bushtops as well."[146]