THE SCARLET TANAGER. 251 



PYRANGA RUBRA.— Vieilht. 

 The Scarlet Tanager. 



Tanagra rubra. Linn., I. (1766) 314. Wil. Am. Orn., II. (1810) 42. Aud. Orn. 

 Riog., IV. (1838) 3§8. 



Description. 



Bill shorter than the head; second quill longest; first and third a little shorter; 

 tail moderately forked; general color of male bright-carmine; wings and tail velvet- 

 black, the quills internally edged with white towards the base. Female olive-green 

 above, yellowish beneath ; wing and tail feathers brown, edged with olivaceous. 



The young mules are colored like the females, but generally exhibit more or loss 

 of red feathers among the greenish ones. Sometimes the full plumage is varied by 

 a few yellow feathers, or by olivaceous edges to the wings ; not unfrequently there 

 is a partly concealed bar of red or yellow on the wing, across the median coverts. 

 Young males are sometimes seen with the body like the female, the wings and tail 

 like the male. 



Length, seven and forty one- hundredths inches; wing, four inches; tail, three 

 inches. 



This gaudy summer visitor breeds in all the New-England 

 States ; less plentifully, however, in the northern than in the 

 southern districts. It arrives from the South about the fif- 

 teenth of May, and commences building about the last of 

 that month. The favorite localities of this bird seem to be 

 oak-groves, situated near swamps : here I have often heard 

 several males singing at the same time, and have watched 

 them in their active movements in their pursuit of insects, 

 of which this species destroys great numbers. The nest is 

 placed on a horizontal limb of a tree, usually from fifteen 

 to twenty feet from the ground, in the deep woods. It is 

 constructed of slender twigs of the oak, huckleberry or 

 whortleberry bush, and weeds: these are loosely put to- 

 gether ; so much so, that, were it not for the interlacing of 

 the small joints of the twigs, it would soon fall apart. It is 

 not deeply hollowed, and is lined with thread-like fibrous 

 roots and the leaves of the various pines. The whole 

 structure is so thinly made as almost to fall to pieces on 

 removal from the tree. The eggs are usually four in num- 

 ber, sometimes three, seldom five. They are of a dull light 

 greenish-blue color, of different shades, and spattered with 



