1 02 AMERICAN RED STAR T. 



and feet, blackish brown. The female is of a light flaxen 

 colour, with the wings dusky black, and the cheeks, breast, 

 and whole lower parts, a clay colour, with streaks of a darker 

 colour under the wings, and tinged in several places with 

 bluish. Towards fall, the male, while moulting, becomes 

 nearly of the colour 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. 



AMEEICAN EEDSTAET. (Muscicapa ruticilla) 



PLATE YL— Fig. 6. 



Muscicapa ruticilla, Linn. Syst. i. 236, 10. — Ghnel. Syst. i. 935. — Motacilla flavi- 

 cauda, Ghnel. Syst. i. 997 (female). — Le gobe-mouche d'Amerique, Briss. Orn. 

 ii. 383, 14. PI, enl. 566, fig. 1, 2.— Small American Eedstart, 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).— Peak's Museum, 

 No. 6658. 



SETOPHAGA RUTICILLA.— Swainson.* 



Muscicapa ruticilla, Bonap. Synop. p. 68.— Setophaga ruticilla, North. Zool. ii. 

 223.— Setophaga, Swain. N. Groups, Zool. Journ. Sept. 1827, p. 360. 



Though this bird lias been classed by several of our most 

 respectable 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 

 flycatchers of its tribe. It is almost perpetually in motion ; 

 and will pursue a retreating party of flies from the tops of the 

 tallest trees, in an almost perpendicular, but zigzag direction, 



* This bird forms the type of Setophaga, 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 Mhippidura; 

 of Vigors and Horsfield. 



The young bird is figured on Plate XLV. Fig. 2. of Vol. II.— Ed. 



