on the black redstart and its breeding haunts. 301


look up the word ‘ start,’ we find amongst other meanings the fol¬

lowing :—“ Old English : start, stirt, stert, steort ” = a tail. Some

“ derive it from the root ‘ start ’ in the sense ‘ project.’ A tail; the

“tail of an animal; thus ‘red start' is literally ‘red tail.”


Consequently readers will at once understand that one can¬

not speak of or write about a “ Blackstart,” since that would mean

a “ blacktail,” which is just exactly what this bird does not go in for.

If we talk of having in our possession some Redstarts and some

Blackstarts, we are merely saying that we have ‘ redtails ’ and

‘ blacktails.’ When it is quite as easy to be correct as the contrary,

we will choose the former.


If we are anxious to win prizes at a bird show, we quite

realize that we must be correct in all our dealings, and we strive to

send our birds in such a condition as will we hope catch the eye of

the judge and, as a sequence, a card into the bargain. Therefore w 7 e

are very particular as to details. The cage, the food, the beauty of

the bird to be exhibited, and so on ; conforming strictly to certain

rules and customs, without which carefulness we foresee disappoint¬

ment and invite a failure.


So too with birds’ names. Let us be correct over them, or

we shall find ourselves in danger of appearing not to know their

meanings. And so in all books upon birds, which are called standard

books, books that is to say which are written by those who hnoiv

what they are writing about, one finds, to take this instance of the

black redstart, that it is always so called : not, mind you, only in

the English language, but, in others. In French it is ‘ rouge-queue

noir, that is, black red-tail; in Italian, ‘ codirosso spazzacamino,’

which is, being interpreted, “ the red-tail that roams along the way,”

meaning, I suppose, that it flits about the paths and hill roads,

as one travels along them. The Spaniards likewise name it colirojo

(Red tail). The Italians call the Rock Thrush ‘ codirossone,’ which

means the ‘ big redtail,’ and this bird not only has the same chestnut-

red but moves the tail in the same way. And in German, the

black redstart is Haus-Rotschwanz, which means the House red-

tail, and if you had ever spoken to a German [no one xvants to

now !] of a haus-schwarzschwanz, which would mean a house black-

tail (or blackstart) he would not know what bird you referred to.



