686 BULLETIN 203, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



According to Mrs. Bailey (1923), "their song begins with an ordi- 

 nary warbler whee-tee^ whee-tee^ but ends unusually, both call and 

 song having individual rich contralto quality." 



Dr. Alexander F. Skutch contributes the following note on the 

 habits of the Guatemalan subspecies : 



"I first made the acquaintance of the painted redstart on the Sierra 

 de Tecpan in west-central Guatemala, where I studied the bird life 

 during the year 1933. I had been on the Sierra many months before 

 I saw a painted redstart. It was keeping company with a Kaup's 

 redstart {Myiohorus miniatus) in the lighter oak woods on the lower 

 part of the mountain, at an altitude of about 7,500 feet. These two 

 warblers are rather similar in color pattern; but the hues of the 

 painted redstart were even more brilliant than those of its companion. 

 The methods of foraging of the two birds formed an interesting con- 

 trast. The painted redstart sought its food chiefly on the bark of the 

 trunks, branches, and coarser twigs ; the other caught its insects on the 

 finer twigs, the foliage, and in the air. The painted redstart worked 

 along the larger branches of the oak trees, often hung head downward 

 from their sides while it peered beneath them, and not infrequently 

 clung in an inverted position while it plucked some insect from the 

 underside of a horizontal limb. It also ascended erect trunks, to which 

 it clung with perfect ease, and moved upward by a series of quick, 

 irregular, jumping flights. An allied woodhewer accompanied the 

 two redstarts, and at one time it hunted on the same trunk with the 

 painted redstart. It was instructive to compare their modes of pro- 

 cedure. The woodhewer worked up the tree in its slow, methodical 

 fashion, and probably found every insect and spider that lurked in the 

 crevices of the bark over which it passed. The redstart ascended in 

 a rapid, impulsive manner, touching the bark only here and there, 

 taking only a fraction of the time consumed by the woodhewer in 

 covering the same distance, but without much doubt missing a number 

 of morsels which the patient brown bird would have discovered. 

 Sometimes, too, the painted redstart hunted among the foliage, but not 

 nearly so much as on the bark. 



"I must have watched the redstarts for more than an hour, rarely 

 having seen two more attractive birds in the same tree; and they 

 kept together the whole time. The painted redstart had been molting ; 

 its two outermost tail feathers were considerably shorter than the 

 others and served as a mark of recognition. Two hours after I had 

 left these birds, I returned to the part of the woods where I had first 

 encountered them, and found the two still together. Since a Kaup's 

 redstart was almost never to be found in company with another of 

 its own kind at this season — it was then the first of August — I thought 

 it strange that it should associate so intimately with a member of 



