682 BULLETIN 203, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SETOPHAGA PICTA PICTA Swainson 

 NORTHERN PAINTED REDSTART 



HABITS 



One of the most attractive birds to be found in the mountain can- 

 yons of southern Arizona is this pretty little redstart, painted in strik- 

 ing contrasts of shining black, pure white, and brilliant red. It seems 

 well aware of its beauty, as it flits about the rocky elopes and in the 

 low undergrowth, constantly fanning its pretty tail, spreading its 

 wings, and fluffing out its plumage to show off its colors in a charm- 

 ing display. We found it very common in the canyons of the 

 Huachuca Mountains, from 5,000 up to 7,000 feet, but most abundant 

 in the narrow, damp, shady parts near the mountain streams. 

 H. W. Henshaw (1875) says: "It appears not to inhabit the high 

 mountains nor the extreme lowlands, but to occupy an intermediate 

 position, and to find the rocky hills covered with a sparse growth of 

 oak most congenial to its habits." William Brewster (1882) reports 

 that Frank Stephens found this redstart in the Chiricahua and the 

 Santa Rita Mountains at an elevation of fully 7,000 feet ; they occurred 

 most frequently among pines in a canyon, where they had been seen 

 in April. 



Mrs. Bailey (1928) says: "Those seen by Major Goldman in the 

 Burro Mountains [in New Mexico] in the fall were found 'among the 

 oaks and pines on the northeast slope from 7,000 feet to the summit. 

 One was working over the face of a cliff, its location and motions 

 suggesting those of a Canyon Wren.' " 



Josselyn Van Tyne (1929) added the painted redstart to the avi- 

 fauna of Texas by finding it breeding in the Chisos Mountains, where 

 a young bird was seen that was barely able to fly. "The species was 

 seen only in the heavy pine and cedar forest at 7,000 [feet]. As they 

 hunted insects in the pine trees their actions were often very Creeper- 

 like, but with the additional spreading of the tail so characteristic of 

 S. ruticilla.'''' Later (1937), he writes: 



Great fluctuations in the numbers of a species of bird in an apparently un- 

 changed habitat are difficult to explain. The case of this species in the Chisos 

 Mountains is especially interesting. In 1901 Bailey, Fuertes, and Oberholser 

 saw no Painted Eedstarts during their three weeks' exploration of these moun- 

 tains. In 1928 Van Tyne and Gaige found the species fairly numerous at Boot 

 Spring, and yet Van Tyne, Peet, and Jacot spent the whole of May at the same 

 locality four years later without getting more than an unsatisfactory glimpse 

 of one ; and the Carnegie Museum party, in 1933 and 1935, did not record the 

 species at all. On June 24, 1936, however, Tarleton Smith saw an adult male 

 at the head of Blue Creek Canyon. 



Spring. — The painted redstart belongs to a Mexican and Central 

 American species. The northernmost of the two subspecies extends 



