PAINTED REDSTART. 279 
exclusively of flying insects, but sometimes it captures them from the leaves and bark 
with great activity. While flying after insects, it frequently sings and always closes and 
opens its tail in fan-like manner. 
In winter it seems to be a common bird in the woods of Honduras and Guate- 
mala. Where the beautiful and fragrant cow's horn orchid!, barkerias, brassavolas, 
lelias, oncidiums, cattleyas, epidendrums, chysis, and other orchids are partly flowering, 
partly resting, but always imparting to the landscape an indescribable charm, these 
sprightly birds are hunting among them for insects. 
NAMES: American Repstart, Redstart Warbler, Redstart Flycatcher. 
SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Motacilla ruticilla Linn. (1758). Sylvania ruticilla Nutt. (1832). SETOPHAGA 
RUTICILLA Swans. (1827). 
DESCRIPTION: “Male, in full plumage: Glossy blue-black; belly and breast, white; sides of breast, lining 
of wings, bases of nearly all the wing-quills and tail-feathers, flame-color; this rich orange making a 
conspicuous spot on the wings, and forming a transverse outline with the black on the tail; bill and 
feet, black. Female: Olive-gray where the male is black, and clear yellow where the male is orange. 
- Young males at first resemble the female, and later, in the progress to mature coloration, show every 
graduation in color between the two sexes, being often irregularly patched with black feathers. 
“Length, 5.00 to 5.50 inches; wing and tail, 2.25 to 2.50 inches.” (Stearns and Coues’ “New 
England Bird Life.” Vol. I, p. 175.) 
PAINTED REDSTART. 
Setophaga picta Swatnson. 
The PAINTED REDSTART is one of our most brilliant and distinct birds, its color 
being a deep glossy bluish-black, relieved by a white patch on the wings and a fine 
carmine-red on the breast and belly. This Warbler is common throughout the year in 
the highlands of Mexico, and is found in summer in considerable numbers in southern 
New Mexico and Arizona, where it seems to frequent the oak belt of the mountains. 
Mr. Walter E. Bryant, a well-known and conscientious California ornithologist, was 
the first naturalist who described the nest of the Painted Redstart. He writes: “For my 
knowledge of the nidification of this species, and for the nest and eggs in my collection, 
I am indebted to Mr. Herbert Brown, who became familiar with the birds while in 
Arizona. From Mr. Brown’s observations it appears that they differ somewhat in their 
habits from Setophaga ruticilla, as they seldom or never catch insects on the wing, but 
pick them from the leaves,and branches of the trees; one specimen was seen feeding her 
young with what appeared to be moths and long-legged flies. The nesting-site was on 
a hillside in a slight depression in the ground. A’ nest was found in a hole in a road 
bank, in the Santa Rita Mountains, by Mr. Brown, June 6, 1880. It was loosely con- 
structed of dry grasses and fine shreds of vegetable bark, and lined with white horse- 
hairs; it measured 4.00 inches in diameter by 1.75 inches in height, and the cavity 
2.00 inches in diameter by 1.75 inches in depth. Another nest found by Mr. Brown 
was built in a depression beneath a small bush, on the lower side of a mountain trail.* 
According to Mr. Stephens the Painted Redstart is frequently met with after March 21 
1 Schomburgkia tibicinis. 
* Bull. Nutt. Club. Vol. VI, 1886. 
