Contemporaneous with the blossoming out of the wild plum, the early Richmond cherry and a rich and diversified profusion of woodland flowers, perhaps better exemplified on this occasion by such interesting types as the little Claytonia, or spring-beauty, the rue-anemone and the trilliums, both T. erectum and grandiflorum, with perhaps a few belated blossoms of the hepatica, is the advent of this interesting little bird among us, which here in Northeastern Illinois usually plans its arrival somewhere near the closing days of the first week in May.

Its generic name, Setophaga, interpreted into plainer English, means a devourer of insects, and, were we to select from among the large and varied assortment of birds comprising the bulk of our warbler hosts a form most elegant and expressive of gayety, sprightliness, and, in a measure, frivolity, we could not go far wrong in determining upon this species so easily outclassing all others as the most brilliantly colored member of that numerously large and interesting family, the Mniotiltidae.

At first a creeper and sharp-eyed inspector of hidden crannies, we afterwards discern no less in him, and upon the slightest provocation, a tyrant on the wing, thereby proving a general adaptability to and utility in his calling at all stages of the game—a constant warfare directed against the insect horde to which he devotes himself most assiduously at all times, and it is really astonishing the amount of the minute forms of insect life these little birds will consume. So then, what at first may appear to us as clever acts of trifling weight will, upon closer inspection, prove carefully executed movements planned and carried out with the greatest precision.

Among ornithologists we find it classed as an interesting member of the group of fly-catching warblers. Equally suggestive to the mind of the writer would be the name of the fan-tailed warbler, derived from its well-known habit of carrying the tail slightly elevated and partly spread.

To those who may be on the lookout for just such marked characteristics among our birds this one feature alone will serve as an excellent index in determining its proper identification.

The plainer and grayer markings of the female and immature birds may differ very considerably from the more pronounced black and white, orange-red and salmon-colored blotches of the adult male, but never so strikingly manifesting themselves in the markings of the tail which in either case may appear to the casual observer as quite similar.

Yet if we examine them more critically we will discover that they are distinctly different, the salmon-red and black-tipped feathers of the male bird being replaced by a paler reddish-yellow and grayer-tipped arrangement in the case of the female. Young males have the darker markings of the tail feathers very similar to those of the adult birds, which we are told do not take on the complete dress until the third year. But the habit of constantly flitting the tail in fan-like motions is peculiar alike to all phases of this bird's plumage and above all other characters serves as the greatest aid in naming it.

The very young, or nestling dress, of which little or nothing seems to have been written, bears a partial resemblance to that of the female bird, excepting that the wings are crossed by two yellowish bands, caused by the lighter tippings of the outer coverts. The yellow breast spots of the female are also wanting in this dress.

For further particulars the reader is kindly referred to the colored plate accompanying this article.

Like the robin red-breasts, the name of the Redstart seems to have been brought to America by the earlier settlers who were ever on the watch for familiar objects to remind them of former days, and, as in the case of the example just cited, wrongfully ascribed by them to a far different bird. An analogy, however, exists in the coloration of the European and American birds justifying in a measure the reason for so naming it.

We are told, in Newton's Dictionary of Birds, that the Redstart, the Ruticilla phoenicurus of most ornithologists, is well known in Great Britain, where it is also called the Fire-tail, from the word "start" which in the original Anglo-Saxon "steort," means tail. But the English bird is very different from ours throughout, a marked distinction being its peculiarity of habit in seeking out for a nesting site a hole in a tree or ruined building.

Our bird, contrary to all this, more correctly builds its nest out of doors, usually selecting the upright forks of some tall shrub or small tree and placing therein a neat, compact structure, in which four or five light-colored eggs are deposited that in their spotted appearance and blotching of various shades of brown resemble very closely the eggs of the common yellow warbler (Dendroica aestiva).

But for all this, however, it repairs to the shadier depths of the woods while the yellow warbler on the other hand seeks out the more tangled thickets and willow copses.

The song of the Redstart, too, bears in a striking degree a very close resemblance to that of this same yellow warbler, though, as in the case of the nest, the localities frequented by it serve readily in making a distinction. "In general tone and quality," as Prof. Lynds Jones has remarked in No. 30 of the Wilson Bulletin, "Warbler Songs," "there is a strong resemblance to the Yellow, but the range of variation is greater and the song distinctly belongs to the 'ringing aisles' of the woods." "The common utterance can be recalled by che, che, che, che—pa, the last syllable abruptly falling and weakening." "A soft song is like wee-see, wee-see-wee, with a suggestion at least of a lower pitch for the last syllable."

The range of the American Redstart is quite extended, including, as we may say, all of North America, though it is very rare and irregular in the States west of the Sierras. It is said to breed from Kansas northward.

Tabulated observations compiled by the writer at Glen Ellyn, Illinois, during the past seven years, show that the southward movement of the Redstart commences about the end of the first week in August; the first part of September finds them common, after which their numbers gradually wane, the last of the month, or the first few days in October, witnessing its final departure.

Benjamin True Gault.