96 



SUMMER RED-BIRD. 



eye; throat, breast, and whole lower part of the body of a dull 

 orange yellow; tips and interior vanes of the wings brown; bill, 

 legs, and eye as in the male. The nest is built in the woods on 

 the horizontal branch of a half grown tree, often an evergreen, at 

 the height of ten or twelve feet from the ground, composed out- 

 wardly of broken stalks of dry flax, and lined with fine grass ; the 

 female lays three light blue eggs ; the young are produced about 

 the middle of June ; and I suspect that the same pair raise no more 

 than one brood in a season, for I have never found their nests but 

 in May or June. Towards the middle of August they take their 

 departure for the south, their residence here being scarcely four 

 months. The young are at first of a green olive above, nearly the 

 same color as the female below, and do not acquire their full tints 

 till the succeeding spring or summer. 



The change, however, commences the first season before their 

 departure. In the month of August the young males are distinguish- 

 ed from the females by their motleyed garb ; the yellow plumage 

 below, as well as the olive green above, first becoming stained with 

 spots of a bulf color, which gradually brighten into red; these 

 being irregularly scattered over the whole body, except the wings 

 and tail, particularly the former, which I have often found to con- 

 tain four or five green quills in the succeeding June. The first of 

 these birds I ever shot was green-winged; and conceiving it at that 

 time to be a non-descript, I made a drawing of it with care ; and on 

 turning to it at this moment I find the whole of the primaries, and 

 two of the secondaries yellowish green, the rest of the plumage a 

 full red. This was about the middle of May. In the month of 

 August, of the same year, being in the woods with the gun, I per- 

 ceived a bird of very singular plumage, and having never before 

 met with such an oddity, instantly gave chase to it. It appeared 

 to me, at a small distance, to be sprinkled all over with red, green 

 and yellow. After a great deal of difficulty, for the bird had taken 

 notice of my eagerness, and had become extremely shy, I succeeded 



