of us. Actually he is on the left, being endowed with the gift of ventriloquism. 

 By this gift or attainment the beautiful creature eludes his human foes, l-'or foes 

 the tanager surely has, the more's the pity ! Not content to adore the bird as part 

 and parcel of generous nature, there are those who would pay their homage to 

 the wings only, set among feathers and plaited straw. Such lose the fine art of 

 tenderness. The face that would pale at sight of a brown mouse shines with pride 

 beneath a remnant of red plumage literally dyed with the life-blood of their 

 original owner. 



Well, let Angelina's hat pass for what it is worth to her. It is no more than 

 the redbirds have had to submit to all their life history. There isn't a savage 

 tribe but has made use of bright feathers for dress, either in skins or quills. The 

 dark-skinned native is "dressed for church" if he wear a single feather tuft in his 

 scalp-lock, or a frail shoulder-cape of crimson breasts, stripped from the bird in 

 the bush. 



It may be the tanager has a sort of dull instinct to hide himself on this 

 account in the deep foliage, deeming it the better part of valor to keep out of 

 harm's wav when a nature-lover sits on the toadstool-bedecked log to watch for 

 him. 



His mate, of dull greenish yellow, has less enemies in the disguise of ad- 

 mirers, and her little heart has no call to flutter when the so-called nature-lover 

 haunts the woods. She goes on with her nest-building on the arm of a maple or 

 even lonely apple tree, making haste, for well she knows the season is short .in 

 which to raise their single brood. By the middle of August they must be ofif, have 

 the wings of the young grown sufficient strength ; and yet the old birds only 

 arrived from their warmer clime in the South when May was half over, or later. 



Like the grosbeak's, the tanager's nest is loosely built of twigs and stalks, 

 transparent from below, as if ventilation were more necessary than softness. The 

 dull blue eggs, spotted with brown or purple, may be distinctly seen from beneath 

 when the sun is shining overhead. But why worry the mother bird by long 

 gazing? She is in great distress. Were the ear of the nature-lover ])rGperly 

 tuned he would understand her to be saying, "They're mine, they're mine. I beg, 

 I beg. Don't touch, don't take." 



But in due time the young are juveniles, not nurslings, and they leave the 

 nest, too soon the worse for wear on account of its careless build. At first the 

 thin dress of the young is greenish yellow, like the mother, and they may pass 

 unnoticed amid the late summer foliage. The male juveniles, during their first 

 year, somewhere change to brighter hues in spots and dashes of red and black, as 

 if their clothes had been patched with left-overs from their fathers' wardrobes. 

 The fathers themselves, before they fly to the warm South, drop their scarlet 

 feathers, like tatters, amid the ferns and blueberries, and girls pick them up for 

 the adorning of doll hats. No merrier sight, and none more innocent of character, 

 than this of little girls searching for what is left of the beautiful summer visitor, 

 picking up, as it were, the shreds of his memory. These scarlet feathers, together 

 with those of the summer yellowbird, placed in layers or helter-skelter in a case 



573 



