Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches.
Male -- In spring plumage: Head, neck, back, and middle breast
glossy black, with blue reflections. Breast and underneath
white, slightly flushed with salmon, increasing to bright
salmon-orange on the sides of the body and on the wing linings.
Occasional specimens show orange-red. Tail feathers partly
black, partly orange, with broad black band across the end.
Orange markings on wings. Bill and feet black. In autumn:
Fading into rusty black, olive, and yellow.
Female -- Olive-brown, and yellow where the male is orange. Young
browner than the females.
Range -- North America to upper Canada. West occasionally, as far
as the Pacific coast, but commonly found in summer in the
Atlantic and Middle States.
Migrations -- Early May. End of September. Summer resident.
Late some evening, early in May, when one by one the birds have withdrawn
their voices from the vesper chorus, listen for the lingering "'tsee, 'tsee,
'tseet" (usually twelve times repeated in a minute), that the redstart sweetly
but rather monotonously sings from the evergreens, where, as his tiny body
burns in the twilight, Mrs. Wright likens him to a "wind-blown firebrand, half
glowing, half charred."
But by daylight this brilliant little warbler is constantly on the alert. It
is true he has the habit, like the flycatchers (among which some learned
ornithologists still class him), of sitting pensively on a branch, with fluffy
feathers and drooping wings; but the very next instant he shows true warbler
blood by making a sudden dash upward, then downward through the air, tumbling
somersaults, as if blown by the wind, flitting from branch to branch, busily
snapping at the tiny insects hidden beneath the leaves, clinging to the
tree-trunk like a creeper, and singing between bites.
Possibly he will stop long enough in his mad chase to open and shut his tail,
fan-fashion, with a dainty egotism that, in the peacock, becomes rank vanity.
The Germans call this little bird roth Stert (red tail), but, like so many
popular names, this is a misnomer, as, strictly speaking, the redstart is
never red, though its salmon-orange markings often border on to orange-flame.
In a fork of some tall bush or tree, placed ten or fifteen feet from the
ground, a carefully constructed little nest is made of moss, horsehair, and
strippings from the bark, against which the nest is built, the better to
conceal its location. Four or five whitish eggs, thickly sprinkled with pale
brown and lilac, like the other warblers', are too jealously guarded by the
little mother-bird to be very often seen.