56 BIRDS 



When this exquisite little warbler flashes his brilliant 

 salmon flame-and-black feathers among the trees, darting 

 hither and thither, fluttering, spinning about in the air 

 after insects caught chiefly on the wing, you will surely 

 agree that he is the most beautiful as well as the most 

 lively bird in the woods. The color scheme of his clothes 

 suggests the Baltimore oriole's, only the feathers on the 

 sides of his body, wings, and tail are a pinker shade of 

 flame, and the black ones which cover his back, throat, and 

 upper breast are more glossy, with bluish reflections. But 

 you could not possibly mistake this lovely little sprite for 

 the oriole, he is so much smaller — about an inch shorter 

 than the sparrow. His cousin, the Blackbumian warbler, a 

 rarer bird, with a color scheme of black, white, and beau- 

 tifvd rich orange, can be named instantly by the large 

 amount of white in his tail feathers. There are so few 

 brilliantly colored birds that find their way to us from the 

 tropics, that it should not take long to know them. In 

 Cuba the redstart is known as "El Candelita" — ^the little 

 candle flame that flashes in the deep, dark, tropical forest. 

 No wonder the Spaniards call all the gaily colored, tropi- 

 cal wood warblers "mariposas" — ^butterflies. 



Who would beHeve that this small firebrand, half glow- 

 ing, half charred, whirling about through the trees as if 

 blown by the wind, is a cousin of the sombre oven-bird that 

 wallcs so daintily and leisurely over the ground? The red- 

 start keeps perpetually in motion that he may seize gnats 

 and other gauzy-winged mouthfuls in mid-air — ^not as the 

 flycatchers do, by waiting on a fence-rail or limb of a tree 

 for a dinner to fly past, then dashing out and seizing it, but 

 by flitting about constantly in search of insect prey. The 

 redstart rarely rests on the trees longer than it takes to 



