68 AMERICAN REDSTART. , 
light blue, and becoming brownish towards the tips; lesser 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 proportiori 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 alight 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 of the 
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.— Gel. Syst. i. 935.— Motacilla fla- 
vicauda, Gimel. 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. S . p, 68.—Setophaga ruticilla, North. Zool. ii. 
25, —Setophaga, Swain. N. Cas Zool. Journ. Sept. 1827, p. 360. 
Txovuen 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 
heard; 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 Setophaza, Swainson; 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. 
The young bird is figured in No. 186. — Ep. 
