File:Birds and nature (1900) (14568857327).jpg

Identifier: birdsnature831900chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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ultmale, but never so strikingly manifestingthemselves in the markings of the tailwhich in either case may appear to thecasual observer as quite similar. Yet if we examine them more criticallywe will discover that they are distinctlydifferent, the salmon-red and black-tippedfeathers of the male bird being replacedby a paler reddish-yellow and grayer-tipped arrangement in the case of thefemale. Young males have the darkermarkings of the tail feathers very similarto those of the adult birds, which we aretold do not take on the complete dress un-til the third year. But the habit of con-stantly flitting the tail in fan-like mo-tions is peculiar alike to all phases of thisbirds plumage and above all other charac-ters serves as the greatest aid in nam-ing it. The very young, or nestling dress, ofwhich little or nothing seems to havebeen written, bears a partial resemblanceto that of the female bird, excepting thatthe wings are crossed by two yellowishbands, caused by the lighter tippings of
Text Appearing After Image:
FROM COL. CHI. ACAO SCIENCES 357 iilCAN REDSTART. (Setophaga ruticilla.)Life-size. 143 the outer coverts. The yellow breastspots of the female are also wanting inthis dress. For further particulars the reader iskindly referred to the colored plate ac-companying this article. Like the robin red-breasts, the nameof the Redstart seems to have beenbrought to America by the earlier settlerswho were ever on the watch for familiarobjects to remind them of former days,and, as in the case of the example justcited, wrongfully ascribed by them to afar dififerent bird. An analogy, however,exists in the coloration of the Europeanand American birds justifying in a meas-ure the reason for so naming it. We are told, in Newtons Dictionary ofBirds, that the Redstart, the Ruticillaphoenicurus of most ornithologists, iswell known in Great Britain, where it isalso called the Fire-tail, from the wordstart which in the original Anglo-Saxon steort, means tail. But theEnglish bird is very difTerent from ourst

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