(_Setophaga ruticilla_) Wood Warbler family
_Called also_: YELLOW-TAILED WARBLER
(Illustration facing p. 190)
_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withdrawn their voices from the vesper chorus, listen for the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.