THE SCARLET TANAGER. PAS AI 
PYRANGA RUBRA. — Vieillot. 
The Scarlet Tanager. 
Tanagra rubra. Linn., I. (1766) 314. Wil. Am. Orn., II. (1810) 42. Aud. Orn. 
Biog., IV. (1838) 388. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Bill shorter than the head; second quill longest; first and third a little shorter; 
tail moderately forked; general color of male bright-carmine; wings and tail velvet- 
black, the quills internally edged with white towards the base. Female olive-green 
above, yellowish beneath; wing and tail feathers brown, edged with olivaceous. 
The young males are colored like the females, but generally exhibit more or less 
of red feathers among the greenish ones. Sometimes the full plumage is varied by 
a few yellow feathers, or by olivaceous edges to the wings; not unfrequently there 
is a partly concealed bar of red or yellow on the wing, across the median coverts. 
Young males are sometimes seen with the body like the female, the wings and tail 
like the male. 
Length, seven and forty one-hundredths inches; wing, four inches; tail, three 
inches. 
This gaudy summer visitor breeds in all the New-England 
States; less plentifully, however, in the northern than in the 
southern districts. It arrives from the South about the fif- 
teenth of May, and commences building about the last of 
that month. The favorite localities of this bird seem to be 
oak-groves, situated near swamps: here I have often heard 
several males singing at the same time, and have watched 
them in their active movements in their pursuit of insects, 
of which this species destroys great numbers. The nest is 
placed on a horizontal limb of a tree, usually from fifteen 
to twenty feet from the ground, in the deep woods. It is 
constructed of slender twigs of the oak, huckleberry or 
whortleberry bush, and weeds: these are loosely put to- 
gether; so much so, that, were it not for the interlacing of 
the small joints of the twigs, it would soon fall apart. It is 
not deeply hollowed, and is lined with thread-like fibrous 
roots and the leaves of the various pines. The whole 
structure is so thinly made as almost to fall to pieces on 
removal from the tree. The eggs are usually four in num- 
ber, sometimes three, seldom five. They are of a dull light 
greenish-blue color, of different shades, and spattered with 
