250 THE BIRDS 
ten to forty feet up. Their food consists chiefly of insects 
and caterpillars gathered from the higher foliage, though 
wild fruit, such as cherries and mulberries, and berries, 
are also eaten. They rear but a single brood each season. 
The eggs are slightly larger than the Summer Tanager, 
averaging .96x.67. I found a few pair breeding at 
Mountain Lake, Giles County, elevation 4,500 feet. 
[610]. Piranga rubra rubra. (Linneus). Summer 
Tanager. 
[Summer Redbird]. 
Rance.—Southeastern United States and northern 
South America. Breeds in Carolinian and Austroriparian 
zones from southeastern Nebraska, southern Iowa, south- 
eastern Wisconsin, central Indiana, southern Ohio, Mary- 
land (formerly New Jersey), and Delaware south to 
northeastern Mexico and central Florida; winters from 
central Mexico and Yucatan to Ecuador, Peru, and 
Guiana; stragglers north to New Brunswick, Quebec, 
Nova Scotia, Maine, and Ontario; migrant in western 
Cuba; accidental in the Bahamas. 
A beautiful bird, especially the male, but a lazy pair 
when it comes down to nest building. Seldom it is that 
you can’t walk along some path on the edge of a piece 
of woods, or that bordering the main country road, and 
look up throgh a flimsy-made nest of these birds, and see 
the eggs. In this respect they may be classed with the 
Mourning Dove and the Green Heron. Don’t misjudge 
these remarks and think you can go along any road or 
path and see nests easily, for they are not an over-common 
