TANAGRID.'E — THE TANAGERS. 437 



This species is extremely susceptible to cold, and in late and unusually 

 chilly seasons large numbers often perish in their more northern haunts, as 

 Massachusetts and Northern New York. 



The nests of the Scarlet Tanager are built late in May, or early in June, 

 on the horizontal branch of a forest tree, usually on the edge of a wood, but 

 occasionally in an orchard. They are usually very nearly flat, five or six 

 inches in diameter, and about two in height, with a depression of only about 

 half an inch. They are of somewhat irregular shape, or not quite symmet- 

 rically circular. Their base is somewhat loosely constructed of coarse stems 

 of vegetables, strips of bark, and the rootlets of wooded plants. Upon this 

 is wrought, with more compactness and neatness, a framework, within which 

 is the lining, of long slender fibrous roots, interspersed with which are slender 

 stems of plants and a few strips "of fine inner bark. 



Mr. Nuttall describes a nest examined by him as composed of rigid stalks 

 of weeds and slender fir-twigs tied together A\ith narrow strips of Apocy- 

 num and pea-vine runners, and lined with slender wiry stalks of the Hdian- 

 /Af^M^?!, the whole so thinly plaited as readily to admit the light through 

 the interstices. 



The eggs, four or five in number, vary in length from an inch to .90, and 

 have an average breadth of .65. Their ground-color varies from a well- 

 marked sliade of greenish-blue, to a dull white with hardly the least tinge 

 of blue. The spots vary in size, are more or less confluent, and are chiefly 

 of a reddish or rufous brown, intermitigled with a few spots of a brownish 

 and obscure ]3urple. 



Pyranga ludoviciana, Bonap. 



LOUISIANA TANAGER. 



Tanagra ludoviciana, Wil.son, Am. Orn. Ill, 1811, 27, pi. xx, 1". 1. — BoN. Obs. 1826, 

 95. — AxJD. Orn. Biog. IV, 1838, 385; V, 1839, 90, pi. ccoliv, cccc. Tanarjnr 

 (Pyranga) ludoviciana, Bonap. Syn. 1828, 105. — Nuttall, Man. I, 1832, 471. 

 Pyranga ludoviciana, Iticii. List, 1837. — Bokap. List, 1838. — AuD. Syn. 1839, 137. 

 — Ib. Birds Am. Ill, 1841, 211, pL ccx. — Sclater, Pr. ZooL Soc. 1856, 125.— 

 Cooper, Orn. Cal. I, 1870, 145. Pyranga erythropis, Vieillot, Nouv. Diet. XXVIII, 

 1819, 291. (" Tanagra Columbiana, Jakd. ed. W^ilson, I, 317," according to Sclater, 

 but I cannot find such name.) 



Sp. Char. Bill shorter than the head. Tail slightly forked : first three quills nearly 

 equal. iVale. Yellow; the middle of the back, the wings, and the tail black. Head and 

 neck all round strongly tinged with red ; least so on the sides. A band of yellow across 

 the middle coverts, and of yellowish-white across the greater ones; the tertials more or 

 less edged with whitish. Female. Olive-green above, yellowish beneath ; the feathers of 

 the interscapular region dusky, margined Avitli olive. The wings and tail rather dark 

 brown, the former with the same marks as the male. Length, 7-25 ; wing, 3.60 ; tail, 2.85. 



Hab. Western portions of United States, from the Missouri Plains to the Pacific ; north 

 to Fort Liard, south to Cape St. Lucas. Oaxaca (Scl.) ; Guatemala (Scl.) ; Orizaba (Scl.) ; 

 Vera Cruz (winter, Sumiciirast). 



