BIRDS OF 



232. PIRANGA RUBRA (LINN.). 610. 

 Summer Tanager. 



Male, rich rose-red or vermillion, including wings and tail ; the wings, 

 however, dusky on the inner webs ; bill rather pale ; feet darker. Female, 

 dull brownish-olive ; below dull brownish-yellow. Young male like the female ; 

 the male changing plumage, shows red and green confused in irregular patches, 

 but no black. The female, with general resemblance to female rubra, is dis- 

 tinguished by the dull brownish, ochre or buffy tinge, the greenish and 

 yellowish of rubra being much purer ; the bill and feet also are generally 

 much paler in erythromelas. Size of rubra or rather larger. 



HAB. Eastern United States to the Plains, north to Southern New 

 Jersey and Southern Illinois, casually north to Connecticut and Ontario, and 

 accidently to Nova Scotia. In winter, Cuba, Central America and Northern 

 South America. 



Nest, on the horizontal bough of a tree; composed of strips of bark, 

 rootlets and grass, lined with fine grass and fibre. 



Eggs, 3 to 5 ; dull greenish-blue, spotted with reddish-brown. 



We sometimes meet in the humbler walks of life people 

 with little education, who, from a natural love of the subject, are 

 wonderfully correct in their observation of the birds. 



A man of this class, who, at the time I speak of, lived near 

 a clump of bush on the mountain above the reservoir, three 

 miles east of Hamilton, told me that one summer while he lived 

 there a number of red birds, which had not black wings and tail 

 like the common kind, bred in that bush. I felt sure he was 

 describing the Summer Red Bird, and looked through that bush 

 with interest every subsequent spring, but it was not till May, 1885, 

 that I found the first and only individual of the species I ever 

 saw in Canada. It was a female in fine adult plumage, and was 

 among a group of Scarlet Tanagers, which apparently had 

 just arrived from the south, and were enjoying the last rays of 

 the setting sun which gilded the topmost twigs of a dead tree 

 in the bush already referred to. Individuals have been found 

 straggling as far north as Massachusetts and Connecticut, but 

 the home of the species is farther south, and the above is the 

 only record for Ontario. 



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