84 BRIGHT. FEATHERS. 
tiny body the full effect of color contrast, shifting every moment into 
novel combinations with the cool shade of the background, himself the 
foremost figure of an animated picture. But with all this grace and 
elegance, this revelry and waywardness, when color plays the pleasing 
part of a continual surprise, the Redstart has an eye to business, and 
incessantly pursues the gauzy creatures that furnish food to him and all 
his kind. You may know him even in his early incompleted dress, and 
never fail to recognize his less conspicuous mate, by several character- 
istic traits. In their unceasing forays on the insect world, they have a 
fashion of skipping rapidly along the larger horizontal boughs of trees, 
with lowered head and drooping wings, and with incessant sidewise flirt- 
ing of the fan-shaped tail, that best displays its pretty parti-coloration, 
the attitude and action being exactly those you have observed in the 
poultry-yard, when the sultan of the harem pursues a reluctant fugitive. 
These headstrong raids along the limbs are changed at intervals, when 
still more buoyant and more dextrous action absorbs the ceaseless stream 
of the Redstarts’ energy : without a moment's pause, the birds shoot out 
to this side or to that, and capture insects on the wing in the most 
spirited manner ; they dart in zigzag, generally downward, while the 
repeated clicking of their mandibles, as turn after turn is executed at 
seeming random, yet with admirable precision, tells with what success 
these dashing guerillas wage their warfare. Such raids are made right 
through the ranks of the airy little insects that swarm in the sunbeams, 
and at every descent into their midst not one, but many, of the midges 
meet their fate ; the Flycatcher regains his foothold with marvellous 
celerity, and races as before along the limb, with many a twitter of 
delight, till he is lost to view.” 
“The Redstart’s notes are very curious ; though scarcely describable 
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