I 



816 The Sparrow-like Birds 



affair of coarse grasses, leaves, and bark, and is placed in a crotch near 

 the ground; the eggs are from three to five in number, white, speckled and 

 spotted with rufous-brown. In the Western States from the eastern border of 

 the Great Plains to the Pacific coast occurs the Long-tailed Chat (/. v.longicauda), 

 which differs in having the wing, tail, and bill longer than in the typical form. 



Redstarts. We have space to mention but a few more of the many engaging 

 members of the family, among them the Redstarts (Setophaga), which may be 

 described as small, " flycatching " Mniotiltida, with a short, depressed bill, 

 strong rictal bristles, and a plumage varied with black, red, or orange and 

 white. The American Redstart (5. ruticilla) has the head, neck, chest, and 

 upper parts uniform shining black, the sides of the breast and flanks as well 

 as the basal half of the wing-feathers reddish salmon, and the belly white, 

 while the constantly spread tail has the basal two thirds of all but the middle 

 pair of feathers pale orange or salmon-pink. It is a restless, active, arboreal 

 species, affecting woodlands and open, timbered swamps, where it flits from 

 limb to limb, now and again making quick sallies out to catch passing insects, 

 spreading and flirting its handsome tail and keeping up a constant but rather 

 weak, though varied, song. 



Red Warbler. Also belonging to this "flycatching" group is the handsome 

 little Red Warbler (Ergaticus ruber), the subject of our colored plate. It is a 

 native of the highlands of Mexico, and but little is known of its life history, its 

 habits of nidification, for instance, being unknown. 



THE TANAGERS 



(Family Tanagridce) 



% 



The Tanagers are most closely related to the Finches, so closely, in fact, that 

 it is almost impossible to draw any sharp or satisfactory line between them, and 

 until the anatomical structure, now almost unknown, is worked out for the great 

 variety of forms, the limits of both groups must be regarded as more or less 

 artificial. As at present understood the Tanagers may be defined as small, 

 fruit-eating or insect-eating, nine-primaried, singing birds (Oscines), with a more 

 or less cone-shaped bill in which the commissure is not distinctly angulated or 

 deflexed at base, nor is the cutting edge of the mandible ever angulated or 

 toothed back of the middle, though often toothed at or beyond this point. 



The Tanagers are exclusively American, having their center of distribution 

 in the dense forest-clad region of Central and South America between the tropics 

 and east of the Andes, whence they fall off rapidly in numbers either way, only 

 about fifteen species extending southward to Argentina, and only six forms, and 

 these of a single genus, reaching as far north as the United States. About four 

 hundred species are known, distributed among sixty or more genera. They are 

 compactly built birds, few of them exceeding ten inches in length and the ma- 

 jority of them being only about six inches long. They are chiefly remarkable 



