SUMMER RED-BIRD. 97 



are light blue, inclining to purple ; the eye large, the iris of a light 

 hazel color ; the length of the whole bird seven inches and a quarter, 

 and between the tips of the expanded wings twelve inches. The female 

 (fig. 4), differs little in size from the male ; but is above of a brownish 

 yellow olive, lightest over the eye ; throat, breast, and whole lower part 

 of the body of a dull orange yellow ; tips and interior vanes of the 

 wings brown ; bill, legs, and eye as in the male. The nest is built in 

 the woods on the horizontal branch of a half-grown tree, often an ever- 

 green, at the height of ten or twelve feet from the ground, composed 

 outwardly of broken stalks of dry flax, and lined with fine grass ; the 

 female lays three light blue eggs ; the young are produced about the 

 middle of June ; and I suspect that the same pair raise no more than 

 one brood in a season, for I have never found their nests but in May or 

 June. Towards the middle of August they take their departure for the 

 south, their residence here being scarcely four months. The young are 

 at first of a green olive above, nearly the same color as the female 

 below, and do not acquire their full tints till the succeeding spring or 

 summer. 



The change, however, commences the first season before their de- 

 parture. In the month of August the young males are distinguished 

 from the females by their motleyed garb ; the yellow plumage below, as 

 well as the olive green above, first becoming stained with spots of a buff 

 color, which gradually brighten into red ; these being irregularly scat- 

 tered over the whole body, except the wings and tail, particularly the 

 former, which I have often found to contain four or five green quills in 

 the succeeding June. The first of these birds I ever shot was green- 

 winged ; and conceiving it at that time to be a nondescript, I made a 

 drawing of it with care ; and on turning to it at this moment I find the 

 whole of the primaries, and two of the secondaries yellowish green, the 

 rest of the plumage a full red. This was about the middle of May. 

 In the month of August, of the same year, being in the woods with the 

 gun, I perceived a bird of very singular plumage, and having never 

 before met with such an oddity, instantly gave chase to it. It appeared 

 to me, at a small distance, to be sprinkled all over with red, green, and 

 yellow. After a great deal of difiiculty, for the bird had taken notice 

 of my eagerness, and had become extremely shy, I succeeded in bring- 

 ing it down ; and found it to be a young bird of the same species with 

 the one I had killed in the preceding May, but less advanced to its 

 fixed colors ; the wings entirely of a greenish yellow, and the rest of 

 the plumage spotted in the most irregular manner, with red, yellow, 

 brown, and greenish. This is the variegated Tanager, referred to in the 

 synonymes prefixed to this article. Having, since that time, seen them 

 in all their stages of color, during their residence here, I have the more 

 satisfaction in assuring the reader that the whole four species mentioned 

 Vol. II.— 7 



