196 THE AMERICAN REDSTART. 



lining of the wings and the sides extensively tinged with the same color, occasion- 

 ally a few touches across the chest below the black; lower breast, belly, and 

 crissum, white ; bill black ; feet dark brown ; black in variable amounts on sides of 

 breast between the orange-red spots ; lower tail-coverts sometimes broadly tipped 

 with blackish. Adult female : Above, brownish ash with an ochraceous or olive 

 tinge on back; salmon parts of male replaced by yellow (Naples yellow), and the 

 reddish salmon of sides by chrome yellow; remaining under parts dull whitish, 

 sometimes buffy across chest. Immature male : Similar to adull female, but 

 duller the first year; the second year mottled with black; does not attain full 

 plumage until third season. Length 5.00-5.75 (127.-146.1,) ; av. of five Columbus 

 males: wing 2.59 (65.8) ; tail 2.17 (55.1) ; bill .36 (9.1). 



Recognition Marks. — Medium Warbler size; black with salmon-red and 

 salmon patches of male; similar pattern and duller colors of female and young; 

 tail usually half open and prominently displayed, whether in sport or in or- 

 dinary flight. 



Nest, in the fork of a sapling from five to fifteen feet up, of hemp and other 

 vegetable fibers, fine bark, and grasses, lined with fine grasses, plant-down and 

 horse-hair. Eggs, 4 or 5, greenish, bluish, or grayish-white, dotted and spotted, 

 chiefly about larger end, with cinnamon-rufous or oHve-brown. Av. size, .68 x .51 

 (17-3 XI3-)- 



General Range.- — North America north to Fort Simpson, west regularly to 

 the Great Basin and casually to the Pacific Coast States, breeding from the middle 

 portion of the United States northward. In winter, the West Indies, southern 

 Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. 



Range in Ohio. — Abundant summer resident throughout the state, more 

 common during migrations. 



THE "start" of Redstart is from the old Anglo-Saxon steort, a tail; 

 hence. Redstart means Redtail; but the name would hardly have been ap- 

 plied to the American bird had it not been for a chance resemblance which it 

 bears to the structurally different Redstart of Europe, Ruticilla phoenicurus. 

 In our bird the red of the tail is not so noticeable as is the tail itself, which 

 is handled very much as a coquette handles a fan, being opened or shut, or 

 shaken haughtily, to express the owner's varied emotions. 



The Redstart is the presiding genius of woodland and grove. He is a 

 bit of a tyrant among the birds, and among his own kind is exceedingly sen- 

 sitive upon the subject of metes and bounds. As for the insect world he 

 rules it with a rod of iron. See him as he moves about through a file of 

 slender poplars. He flits restlessly from branch to branch, now peering up 

 at the under surface of a leaf, now darting into the air to secure a heedless 

 midge, and closing upon it with an emphatic snap, now spreading the tail 

 in pardonable vanity or from sheer exuberance of spirits ; but ever and anon 

 pausing just long enough to squeeze out a half-scolding song. The paler- 

 colored female, contrary to the usual wont, is not less active nor less notice- 

 able than the male, except as she is restrained for a season by the duties of 



