5°6 
PERCHING BIRDS. 
September, when it presses gradually south into all the Southern States, a few 
continuing their journey into South America. Dr. Coues gives the following descrip¬ 
tion of its habits :—“ To observe the manners of the rubycrown one need only repair 
at the right season to the nearest thicket coppice or piece of shrubbery. These are its 
favourite resorts, especially in the fall and winter; though sometimes, more parti¬ 
cularly in the spring, it appears to be more ambitious, and its slight form may be 
almost lost among the branches of the taller trees. We shall most likely find it 
not alone but in straggling troops, which keep up a sort of companionship with each 
other as well as with different birds, though each individual seems to be absorbed in 
its particular business. We hear the slender wiry note, and see the little creatures 
skipping nimbly about the smaller branches in endlessly varied attitudes, peering 
in the crevices of the bark for their minute insect-food, taking short nervous 
flights from one bough to another, twitching their wings as they alight, and always 
too busy to pay attention to what may be going on around them.” The rubycrest 
builds a tiny nest consisting of a mass of hair and feathers mixed with moss and 
some short bits of straw; commonly breeding in the heavy pine and spruce 
forests on the mountains of Colorado and also in Arizona. It was of the rubycrest 
that Audubon himself wrote: “When I tell you that its song is fully as sonorous as 
that of the canary-bird, and much richer, I do not come up to the truth ; for it is not 
only as powerful and clear, but much more varied and pleasing.” The male has a 
rich scarlet crest; the upper-parts are greenish olive, and the wings and tail dusky; 
the under-parts being yellowish-white. 
The Wood-Warblers. 
Family MniotiltidM. 
The American family of birds known as wood-warblers may be con¬ 
veniently mentioned here, not only on account of their popular name, which 
causes them to be associated with the warblers of the Old World, but also from 
the circumstance that they are probably more or less closely related to the 
Ccerebidce, among which they are placed by Brehm. It would be useless 
to attempt to define the whole family, or to mention the numerous genera; 
and we consequently select for illustration the black-throated green warbler 
(Dendrceca virens ) as a well-known example of a large and widely-spread genus. 
Small in build, the numerous species of this large group have the beak of 
variable size, conical in shape, and provided with rictal bristles; while the wings 
are long and pointed, the first and second primaries being the longest. The 
metatarsus is long, and the claws are rather small and much curved. The coloration 
of the tail-feathers is a good clue to any member of this genus, since these are 
almost invariably blotched with white. Of thirty-five reputed species of this 
genus of wood-warblers, twenty-six have been ascribed to North America, one of 
the best known of these being the summer yellow-bird of the United States, an 
abundant and familiar denizen of parks and orchards; while another is the lovely 
orange-breasted Blackburn’s warbler, of which Dr. Coues says, “ there is nothing 
to compare with the exquisite hue of this Promethean torch.” The black- 
