SCARLET TANAQER. 



brilliant aniline dyes which fairly makes the eyes swim! 

 The whole plumage of the bird, except wings and tail, ia 

 an intense red-scarlet; not a vermilion color, for that 

 lacks life, but a vivid hue such as one can only produce 

 by superimposing Geranium Lake upon Scarlet Ver- 

 milion. The wings and tail are glossy black; the under 

 wing-coverts white. Female light olive green above, 

 yellow-green beneath; wings and tail umber brown 

 margined with dull olive green. Young males like the 

 female but with black wings and tail. By the first of 

 September the adult male moults his scarlet feathers, 

 and these are replaced for winter wear by others of a 

 bright olive green hue.* The nest is a loose- woven cup- 

 like structure of coarse grass, plant stalks, and vine 

 tendrils lightly but skilfully put together; it is usually 

 located near the end of a horizontal limb, about twenty 

 feet (often much less) above the ground. Egg pale 

 greenish blue, strongly marked with madder brown. 

 This bird is distributed from southern Illinois and Vir- 

 ginia northward to New Brunswick and Manitoba. 



The song of the Scarlet Tanager like that of the Rose- 

 breasted Grosbeak has been frequently compared to the 

 Robin. H. L. Nelson and E. A. Samuels, both writers 

 about our northeastern birds, express the opinion that 

 the songs are similar. Florence A. Merriam also says 

 the song suggests that of the Robin, and J. B. Grant 

 thinks " there is indeed a likeness between the two, the 

 Robin's song excelling, however, in heartiness if not in 

 variety." Some years ago when I first made the ac- 

 quaintance of the bird, I was deceived into thinking the 

 song was that of the Robin; but in a minute of time I 

 discovered a peculiar burred character to the voice and 

 shortly afterward traced it to its proper source. To be 

 sure, there is a certain wild-wood likeness between all 

 bird songs, and between those of the Rose-breasted 



*W. E. D. Scott says, in Bird Studies: "The males . . . vary 

 very much in the shade and intensity of both the red of the body 

 and black of the wings and tail. They also present curious ex- 

 amples of color variation. . . . One of the most frequent of these 

 divergences is in the direction of one or two more or less clearly 

 defined scarlet or bright yellow wing-bars. These occur most 

 often in very intensely colored birds." 



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