TENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 97 
anxiety for the protection of its eggs or young, flying in front of the 
prying visitor or tumbling along the ground as if wounded after the 
manner of the partridge with wings and tail outspread, it endeav- 
ours by every artifice to attract the unwelcome intruder from the 
neighbourhood. 
It is one of those birds occasionally selected by the Crow Bunting 
as a foster mother for its young, and not unfrequently the single egg 
of the latter may be found deposited among the five or six eggs of 
the Warbler. 
Of all our summer visitors the most brilliant in plumage, almost 
tropical in its character is the Scarlet Tanager, Pyranga Rubra, 
which arrives from the south from the 10th to the 15th of May. 
The male bird is too well known to require description, but it may 
not be generally known that the female has none of the gorgeous 
colouring of the cock bird, but is olive green above and yellowish 
beneath, wings and tail brown, edged with olive colour, and the young 
males for the first season are colored like the females, but generally 
exhibit more or less of red feathers among the greenish ones. I have 
met with the nest and young of this handsome bird in the woods 
about Lake Simcoe, but only occasionally, and as a general rule they 
seem to disappear from this part of Ontario like so many of their 
companions, the Warblers, after a very brief stay in the early part of 
May. ° 
Following close upon the arrival of the Scarlet Tanager, and often 
seen with it, comes that beautiful bird, the Crimson-breasted Gros- 
beak, Zamelodia Ludoviciana. In general it is a shy bird, keeping 
much in the forest, where it feeds mostly upon the seeds ef the birch 
and alder, the tender buds and blossoms of the trees, and upon 
insects which it catches on the wing ; but when the cherries are ripe 
in the gardens and orchards, it often approaches our dwellings, and 
certainly repays us for the little fruit it consumes by the delicious 
softness and melody of its notes. They are very numerous in the 
woods at Lake Simcoe, breeding there, and remaining with us until 
the middle of September. 
Yet another visitor, whose gorgeous plumage quickly attracts 
attention to its arrival following the Tanagers and Grosbeaks, is the 
beautiful Baltimore Oriole, Zeterus Galbula. Gliding from branch to 
branch in search of insects, the brilliant livery of the male renders 
hima conspicuous object, even if his clear, mellow whistling notes, 
