AMERICAN REDSTART. 



the wing feathers, two middle tail feathers, and the ter- 

 minal third of the rest of the tail feathers black; other 

 portions of these feathers and the sides of the breast and 

 flanks scarlet-salmon or orange salmon; extreme under 

 parts white tinged with salmon; bill with bristles at tho 

 base. Female, salmon color replaced by light ochre 

 yellow; head brown-gray; back olive green with a gray 

 tinge; under parts except where marked with dull yel- 

 low, gray white. There are birds whose yellow tones 

 have a greenish cast. Nest in the Y of a young tree or 

 shrub; it is lodged at a point anywhere from five to 

 cwenty-five feet above the ground, and is skilfully woven 

 with plant fibres, leaf stalks, and fine rootlets, and lined 

 with finer material of the same nature including plant 

 down. Egg a blue-gray white speckled mostly at the 

 larger end with cinnamon and olive browns. This bird 

 is distributed throughout North America; it breeds from 

 North Carolina and Kansas to Hudson's Bay, and winters 

 in the West Indies and tropical South America. 



The song of the Redstart is a very simple and mon- 

 otonous one generally consisting of seven notes all of 

 a kind, except the last one which is in most cases a drop 

 of about a major third. It could be fairly represented by 

 a series of dots, thus: The musical 



notation does not look very different: 

 Viva.ce. cres. accel. * 



The voice is pitched very high, there is no overtone, and 

 there is a slight crescendo and accelerando; but it is very 

 slight. The song has few if any variations; the follow- 

 ing record will show how slight they usually are, and 

 how fixed the monotonous rhythm is: 



209 



