i8 6 in | Hoffmann, Summer Birds of the Rhi7ie. 20Q 



turdine affinities, and he has the Hermit Thrush's trick of raising 

 his tail sharply after alighting. The young have brown backs and 

 reddish streaked breasts, so that they suggest the Robin still 

 more strongly. 



The Blackbird's song is bright and invigorating; I heard it 

 more from single birds than from choruses. Sometimes as the 

 singer sat on the spray of some tree on the hillsides, the discon- 

 nected and vigorous phrasing suggested the song of the Brown 

 Thrasher. The nest is placed in bushes instead of in trees, and 

 the bird is more truly resident in Germany than the Robin is in 

 Massachusetts, the northern birds joining their brethren of Cen- 

 tral Europe for the winter. 



Black Redstart {Ruticilla titys). 



One of the most characteristic and familiar birds of Germany 

 is the Redstart, a bird related, not to its American namesake, 

 which it resembles very slightly, but to our Bluebird. In the 

 domestic economy of German Nature, it seems to take the place 

 of the Bridge Pewee (Sayornis phcebe). In Germany I found the 

 Black Redstart by far more common than the Black-throated, the 

 commoner British species, though I saw the latter not infre- 

 quently. It may be of interest to hear, on the authority of 

 Mr. Saunders, that the male acquires his black breast by the 

 wearing off of the gray tips to his feathers, as in the case of 

 the Bobolink. 



The Redstart haunts gardens and yards, flying constantly to 

 the garden walls or house roofs, where it bobs at intervals like a 

 Winter Wren. Its food consists of insects, which it pursues on 

 the wing with considerable dexterity. 



The Redstart arrives and breeds early and I failed to hear the 

 song, which to the German villagers heralds the advent of spring. 



A nest of this bird was shown me, on a shelf over some cellar 

 stairs. To reach it the bird had to fly from the garden through 

 the back door, which the occupants of the house kept open for it. 



The German name, ' Rothschwiinzchen', or Red-tail, corresponds 

 to the English, Redstart, from the A. S. steort, a tail. 



