THE WARBLERS 



1661 



upper parts brown, with a conspicuous white or bufT eyebrow; the throat and upper 

 breast are metallic cobalt blue, centred with a large spot of pure white or chestnut, 

 a band of black succeeding the blue, bordered by another band of chestnut; the rest 

 of the under parts being buffy white. ' 



An inhabitant of the greater part of Europe, the redbreast or robin 

 (E. rubecula) is such a familiar and well-known bird as to require but 

 scant notice here. Breeding alike in our gardens and shrubberies and in the middle 

 of lonely woods, it constructs its nest of dry leaves, moss, and dead grass, lined 

 with a little hair. The eggs are 

 white, blotched, and streaked with ^ - 



light red. When the young birds 

 are fledged, they flit about the gar- 

 dens and outhouses gathering a 

 variety of insects. Many of them 

 migrate in autumn, while others 

 linger to utter their silvery notes 

 during the dead months of the 

 year, drawing near the cottages 

 and farmhouses at the approach 

 of frost. The plumage of the 

 male robin is olive brown above, 

 tinted with gray; the neck, fore- 

 head, and throat being bright 

 orange, the remainder of the lower 

 parts olive brown. The robin of 

 the Canary islands has been classi- THE REDBREAST. 



fled as a distinct species. 



Another beautiful species of warbler is the ruby throat {E. calliope), 

 represented on the right side of the illustration on p. 1659, which makes 

 its summer home in the extreme north of Russia and Siberia, breeding among the 

 tundras of the Arctic Circle, after the ice and snow have thawed and disappeared. 

 Mr. Seebohm says that the song of the rubythroat "is very fine, decidedly more 

 melodious than that of the bluethroat, and very little inferior to that of the night- 

 ingale. When first I heard him sing I thought I was listening to a nightingale; he 

 had his back toward me when I shot him, and I was astonished to pick up a bird 

 with a scarlet throat. The feathers were as glossy as silk, and when I skinned him 

 I thought I had rarely if ever seen so beautiful a warbler. ' ' The rubythroat appears 

 in the south of Siberia as early as the beginning of April. Its nest is said to be a 

 slight structure, and the eggs are olive gray. It is a bird of shy and solitary habits, 

 frequenting thickets and close cover, and obtaining its food chiefly upon the 

 ground. It loses the brilliant color of the throat in confinement. It winters in the 

 Philippine islands, South China, Burma, and Northern and Central India, occa- 

 sionally straying into Europe. Jerdon once met with a rubythroat on board ship 

 a little south of Bombay, when a single bird of this species took refuge on board 

 his vessel in the month of November. The adult male has the upper parts of a 



