510 
ECONOMIC KELATIONS OF OUR BIRDS. 
streams, and low, damp thickets. Groves, fence-rows and orchards are also 
Visited by it frequently. 
In its metliod of obtaining food, the Redstart is a fly-catcher of the most ex¬ 
pert and vigorous sort, but its small size, its great dexterity, and its peculiar 
hunting grounds enable it to do a work quite distinct from that of the true Fly¬ 
catchers, even of the woodland species. Instead of stationing itself on the 
terminal branches where it can survey the openings between the tree-tops or 
command the fields above or below them, its peculiar field is within each partic¬ 
ular tree-top, and here it plunges headlong through the branches, turning somer¬ 
saults and performing such aerial movements in jiursuit of its prey as only a 
Redstart can. It does beat out into the open air and jilunge in hawk-like swoops 
to the ground, but these are its sports — its trespassings upon the rights of 
others. Its broad-based bill, and strong depending rictals, giving to the mouth, 
when open, the shape of a wide funnel, its keen vision, and its whole aerial out¬ 
fit are adjusted to the gall-flies, leaf-miners, and other diminutive iiisects among 
which it lives, and upon which, I have no doubt, it feeds. Could it be induced 
to live in orchards, vineyards, gardens and parks, it would do there a v7ork 
Which the Pewee, the Least Fly-catcher and the Kingbird cannot. Mr. Samuels 
says that he has known a pair to build, and rear a brood, in a garden within five 
rods »f a house. 
Food: From the contents of eleven stoma.chs, examined collectively, were 
taken fourteen small beetles — some of them .09 of an inch long; four very 
small moths, four small hymenopterous insects —one, an ichneumon, and one, 
one of the Proctrotrypidm? .1 oi an inch long ; one heteropterous insect, .08 
of an inch long, and a large number of dipterous insects, the majority of them 
less than one-tenth of an inch long. Three others had in their stomachs a single 
small larva each. 
Winged insects (Wilson). Various insects and their larv83(De Kay). Winged 
insects and larvae (Audubon). Three specimens examined by Professor Forbes 
gave evidence of having eaten an ichneumon-fly, moths and caterpillars, beetles 
and leaf-hoppers. 
Family TANAGRIDiE: Tanagees. 
Fig. 118. 
LoxnsiANA Tanager {Pyranga ludoviciana ). After Baird, Brewer and Ridgway. 
