AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 239 



tral in tint, build in low bushes and take their food chiefly from the ground. 

 Water birds are generally gray all over, except a tinge of blue in their 

 plumage above. Ducks, however, are many of them variegated with 

 green and other colors that harmonize with the weeds and plants of the 

 shore upon which they feed. Bright colored birds in nearly every case 

 frequent forests and leafy trees. Among familiar examples of these are 

 woodpeckers, the blue jay, and the cardinal grosbeak. Many of the sing- 

 ing birds, as the finches and buntings, find most of their sustenance in the 

 grasses; but high colored ones, like the purple finch and red poll, usually 

 build in trees. Conspicuous for their brilliant colors are the golden oriole, 

 the scarlet tanager and the American goldfinch. All of these species build 

 their nests in trees, and seldom run on the ground. The goldfinch feeds up- 

 on the seeds of compound flowers which are mostly yellow. His plumage 

 of gold and olive allow him to escape the sight of his enemies while picking 

 seeds from the disk of a sunflower, or from a cluster of golden rods. The 

 species that frequent our shrubbery are of a brown or olive brown of dif- 

 ferent shades. They are dressed in colors that blend with the general 

 tints of the ground and herbage while they are seeking their food or sit- 

 ting upon their nests. Birds, however^ do not differ much in the hidden 

 parts of their plumrge. Beneath they are almost universally of grayish 

 or whitish tints, so that while sitting on a branch, anyone looking up- 

 wards can scarcely distinguish them from the hues of the clouds and the 

 sky and the grayish under surface of the leaves of the trees. But why, 

 it may be asked, are the females more plainly dresssed than the males .-' 

 Perhaps it is because the female performs the duties of incubation, and if 

 she were brightly colored, she would be more readily descried by birds 

 of prey while sitting on her nest. The male bird on the contrary, while 

 hunting among the blossoms and foliage of the trees for insect food, is not 

 so readily distinguished from the flowers, for in the temperate latitudes 

 the breeding season is the time when the trees are in blossom. . Again at 

 this season of courtship among the birds, nature has given the males a 

 more brilliant costume. Thus the bobolink changes his winter garment 

 of yellowish brown for one of gorgeous straw color and black; and the red- 

 winged blackbird casts off his tawny suit for one of glossy jet, with epau- 

 lettes of scarlet. After the young are reared and the flowers have faded, 

 they dispense with their brilliant colors and assume the plain hues of the 

 female. And as with the birds so with the insects. The toad is colored 

 like the soil of the garden, while the colors of the common frog that lives 

 among the green rushes and aquatic mosses are green. The tree frog is 

 of a mottled gray, like the outer bark of old trees. Grasshoppers are 

 generally greenish; but there is a species found among the gray lichens on 

 our rocky hills, which is the color of the surface of these rocks. 



Frank H. Sweet. 



