342 The Redstart 



any time of the day. Some observers say he has two distinct songs, others 

 say he has three, while still others aver that the bird has as many as five 

 or six. Gerald Thayer, I believe, is authority for the statement that about 

 his home at Monadnock, New Hampshire, the Redstarts have what he 

 considers three comparatively constant songs, which serve as the basis 

 for all other varieties of their music. 



For my part I have found the Redstart's song to be bewildering and 

 difficult of identification more times than I care to admit. When in 

 spring I find myself in a locality where Warblers are singing, if I can 

 remain there a day or two and learn what species are in song, and watch, 

 and think hard, my memory is at length refreshed to the extent that I 

 soon begin to feel sure of distinguishing the Red- 

 start's tune with some degree of confidence. Others 

 have guardedly hinted that they have experienced 

 similar difficulty in remembering from year to year the Redstart's notes. 

 It is certainly true that to any but those with particularly gifted 

 ears the song of this bird lacks any striking characteristic, such as we 

 all readily recognize in that of many others the Ovenbird, for instance, 

 or the Wood Thrush. 



The nest of the Redstart is made of leaf-stalks, thin strips of bark, 

 plant-down, and similar soft vegetable materials, and usually is lined with 

 fine rootlets or delicate tendrils. Apparently it is always placed in the 

 crotch of a sapling two to fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. One 

 favorite situation, in which I have often found the nest, is between a 

 small branch, little more than a twig, and the main stem of the tree, the 

 latter perhaps as much as three inches in diameter. In such positions the 

 nests were frequently in plain view after they were once discovered. 

 Sometimes, however, the nest is so well hidden that it may be found only 

 after a most careful and prolonged search. 



The four or five eggs are white, variously blotched and spotted with 

 brown and gray, thus resembling those of the Yellow, or Summer, War- 

 bler. They measure about 65 hundredths of an inch long by 50 hun- 

 dredths wide. 



Last spring it became apparent that a pair of Redstarts had a nest 



hidden somewhere within the recesses of a certain limited growth of 



saplings near our summer camp on Lake Champlain. 



' Spying on the birds and watching their movements 



proved fruitless, the thick foliage blotting out all 



vision of the female in every instance when she was seen approaching. 



Meanwhile the male sang daily and hourly, and almost every ten 

 minutes, from his perch on a large tree near by. Every sapling was 

 searched in turn until at last the nest, hidden by leaves, came in sight, 

 in a crotch twelve feet from the ground. 



"The young males of this species," Audubon notes, "do not possess 

 the brilliancy and richness of plumage which the old birds display until 

 the second year, the first being spent in the garb worn by the females ; 



