68 AMERICAN REDSTART. 
light blue, and becoming brownish towards the tips Jesser coverts, 
light blue; greater, black, broadly skirted with the same blue; tail, 
black, exteriorly edged with blue; bill, black above, whitish below, 
somewhat larger in proportion than Finches of the same size usually 
are, but less than those of the genus Emberiza, with which Mr. Pen- 
nant has classed it, though, I think, improperly, as the bird has much 
more of the form and manners of the genus Fringilla, where I must be 
permitted to place it; legs and feet, blackish brown. The female is 
of a light flaxen color, with the wings dusky black, and the cheeks, 
breast, and whole lower parts, a clay color, with streaks of a darker 
color under the wings, and tinged in several places with bluish. To- 
wards fall, the male, while moulting, becomes nearly of the color ofthe 
female, and in one which I kept through the winter, the rich plumage 
did not return for more than two months; though I doubt not, had the 
bird enjoyed his liberty and natural food under a warm sun, this brown- 
ness would have been of shorter duration. The usual food of this 
species is insects and various kinds of seeds. 
AMERICAN REDSTART.— MUSCICAPA RUTICILLA. — 
Fig. 24. 
Muscicapa ruticilla, Lynn. Syst. i. 236, 10. — Gmel. Syst. i. 935. — Motacilla fla- 
vicauda, Gmel. Syst. i. 997, (female.)— Le gobe-mouche d’Amerique, Briss. 
Orn. ii. 383, 14. Pl. enl. 566, fig. 1,2.— Small American Redstart, Edw. 80. 
Id. 257, (female.) Yellow-tailed Warbler, Arct. Zool. ii. No. 301. Id. ii. No. 
282, — Lath. Syn. iv. 427, 18.— Arct. Zool. ii. No. 301, (female.) — Peale’s 
Museum, No, 6658. 
SETOPHAGA RUTICILLA. —Swainson.* 
Muscicapa ruticilla, Bonap. Bye . 68. —Setophaga ruticilla, North. Zool. ii. 
295, — Setophaga, Sout . Groups, Zool. Journ. Sept. 1827, p. 360. 
Tuoveu this bird has been classed by several of our most respec- 
table ornithologists among the Warblers, yet in no species are the 
characteristics of the genus Muscicapa more decisively marked ; and, 
in fact, it is one of the most expert fly-catchers of its tribe. It is al- 
most perpetually in motion, and will pursue a retreating party of flies 
from the tops of the tallest trees, in an almost perpendicular, but zig- 
zag direction, to the ground, while the clicking of its bill is distinctly 
neard: and I doubt not but it often secures ten or twelve of these in 
a descent of three or four seconds. It then alights on an adjoining 
branch, traverses it lengthwise for a few moments, flirting its expand- 
ed tail from side to side, and suddenly shoots off, ina direction quite 
unexpected, after fresh game, which it can discover at a great distance. 
* This bird forms the type of Setophaga, Swamson ; a genus formed of a few 
species belonging entirely to the New World, and intimately connected with the 
fan-tailed Flycatchers of Australia, the Rhippidure of Vigors and Horsfield. 
Th: young bird is figured in No. 186.— Ev. 
