SCARLET TANAGER. 
209 
his glowing colour would often expose him. Besides this usual 
note, he has, at times, a more musical chant, something re- 
sembling in mellowness that of the Baltimore Oriole. His food 
consists of large, winged insects, such as wasps, hornets and 
humble bees, and also of fruit, particularly those of that species 
of Vaccinium usually called huckle-berries, which in their sea- 
son form almost his whole fare. His nest is built about the 
middle of May, on the horizontal branch of a tree, sometimes 
an apple tree, and is but slightly put together; stalks of broken 
flax, and dry grass, so thinly wove together that the light is 
easily perceivable through it, form the repository of his young. 
The eggs are three, of a dull blue,’ spotted with brown or purple. 
They rarely raise more than one brood in a season, and leave 
us for the south about the last week in August. 
Among all the birds that inhabit our woods there is none 
that strike the eye of a stranger, or even a native, with so 
much brilliancy as this. Seen among the green leaves, with 
the light falling strongly on his plumage, he really appears 
beautiful. If he has little of melody in his notes to charm us, 
he has nothing in them to disgust. His manners are modest, 
easy, and inoffensive. He commits no depredations on the pro- 
perty of the husbandman; but rather benefits him by the daily 
destruction in spring of many noxious insects; and when win- 
ter approaches he is no plundering dependent, but seeks in a 
distant country for that sustenance which the severity of the 
season denies to his industry in this. He is a striking ornament 
to our rural scenery, and none of the meanest of our rural song- 
sters. Such being the true traits of his character, we shall always 
with pleasure welcome this beautiful, inoffensive stranger, to 
our orchards, groves and forests. 
The male of this species, when arrived at his full size and 
colours, is six inches and a half in length, and ten and a half 
broad. The whole plumage is of a most brilliant scarlet, except 
the wings and tail, which are of a deep black; the latter hand- 
somely forked, sometimes minutely tipt with white, and the 
interior edges of the wing feathers nearly white; the bill is 
VOL. II. — D d 
