200 



Hi?tts to Audubon Workers. 



make the air vocal with their harmonious 

 strains. 



The Brown Thrasher is ii>^ inches in 

 length and 13 in extent of wings. Its 

 bill is black, the base of the lower man- 

 dible being dark blue. The eye is yellow. 

 The feet are brown. The general color of 



the upper parts is bright reddish brown. 

 The wings are crossed with two white bars 

 margined in front with black. The lower 

 parts are yellowish white spotted on the 

 breast and sides with triangular dark brown 

 spots. The under tail coverts are pale 

 brownish red. The tail is very long. 



HINTS TO AUDUBON WORKERS.* 



FIFTY COMMON BIRDS AND HOW TO KNOW THEM, 



REDSTART. 



LARGER than some of the warblers, the 

 redstart is about the size of a chippy. 

 In habit, however, he is more like the fly- 

 catchers than the sparrows. Indeed, it is 

 probably from his flycatcher-like way of 

 starting up unexpectedly that he received 

 his name; for then you see the blotches of 

 rich salmon that mark his wings and tail, 

 which are hidden when he is quiet. 



His back and throat are black. Each 

 side of his breast is ornamented with a 

 patch of bright salmon-red. The female 

 has no black on her breast, is olivaceous 

 above, and light yellow where the male is 

 salmon. 



Like the flycatchers, they are fluffy in 

 appearence, and sit with their wings droop- 

 ing at their sides. Their diet also consists 

 of insects. But although they have so 

 many mannerisms of the flycatcher, they 

 are true warblers in the mad way in which 

 they career about, opening and shutting 

 their tails fan-fashion, turning somersaults, 

 flitting from branch to branch, giving a little 

 burst of song, and then fluttering around 

 again chasing helter-skelter among the 

 bushes; suddenly falling through the leaves 

 as if they had been shot, only to snap up 

 their hapless prey and dart off to begin 

 their manoeuvres over again. 



They are very winning, friendly little 



♦ Copyright, 1887, by Florence A. Mekriam. 



creatures, and build pretty nests of fine 

 roots, birch bark and flower cotton, or simi- 

 larly dainty materials. According to in- 

 dividual preference, they make their houses 

 in crotches of apple trees, low roadside 

 bushes, or in saplings in open woods. They 

 take good care to select bark the color of 

 the tree, and in that way defy any but the 

 sharpest scrutiny. The little housewife will 

 sometimes fly to her nest with strips of bark 

 four inches long in her bill. When her 

 gray house is nearly finished she has a 

 pretty way of sitting inside and leaning over 

 the edge of her nest to smooth the outside 

 with her bill and neck, as if she were 

 moulding it. 



The redstart's song is a fine, hurried 

 warbler trill that he accents on the end as 

 if glad it was done. 



» _ m m m 



Te - I'd - te - ka - ic - ka -u-ka- teek' . 



One morning, as I was watching a 

 young hairy woodpecker, the alarm of a 

 redstart attracted my attention. She eyed 

 me from all sides, keeping up her nervous, 

 worried cry. It was so significant that I 

 began looking in the crotches for its nest, 

 and finding none, concluded that the young 

 were out. The mother kept flying about 

 me, and the father — a young male with 

 the scarlet just coming out on the sides 

 of his breast — showed a moderate amount 

 of paternal anxiety. Suddenly I discovered 



