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"These two birds, though alike in shape, are as different in color as Mr. and Mrs. Scarlet Tanager. But there is one point about them by which you may tell them from any others. Their curving bills are crossed at the tip, which strange arrangement gives them their name of Crossbill.
This protective coloration of plumage is possessed by the females of many species of birds, which would be very conspicuous, and of course greatly liable to danger while incubating their eggs, if they wore the bright tints of the males. The tanager and indigo-bird afford prominent examples.
The little river flowed in a silver current, smoke rose from many chimneys, and now and then the red homemade linsey dress of a girl gleamed in the sunlight like the feathers of the scarlet tanager. To the left were the fields cleared for Indian corn, and to the right were the gardens. Beyond both were the hills and the unbroken forest.
Now came the most lovely moment of the year. All the trees were putting forth new leaves, leaves so young, so tiny as yet, that one could see the fowls of the air when they lodged in the branches no small privilege, for now the orange oriole, and the bluebird, and the primrose-coloured finch, were here, there, and everywhere; and more rarely the scarlet tanager.
Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson's thrush, white-crown'd sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover. The lights, perfumes, melodies the blue birds, grass birds and robins, in every direction the noisy, vocal, natural concert.
I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.
But if we hesitate thus about these two inconspicuous vireos, whom half of those who do them the honor to read what is here said about them will have never seen, how are we to deal with the scarlet tanager? Our handsomest bird, and with musical aspirations as well, shall we put him into the second class?
In their hair they braided eagle plumes, hawk wings, or the brilliant plumage of the tanager and redbird. Trousers or breeches of any sort they despised as marks of effeminacy. Vermilion was their war emblem; white was only worn at the time of the Green-Corn Dance. In each town stood the war pole or painted post, a small peeled tree-trunk colored red.
First the tanager expressed a desire to mingle with society once more, and went his way; then the orioles were sent to carry on their rough wooing in the big world outside; the robin followed; and at last Virginia was left with several big empty cages and only two birds, a reserved and solitude-loving Mexican clarin, and a saucy goldfinch, so long a captive that he had no desire for freedom.
They were gone almost three years; and one day, I remember now, it was the sixth of June, 1806, when they were camping in what is now Idaho, near the border of Oregon, they found this lovely bird, and wrote a description of it in their note-books just as you did with your Scarlet Tanager, Dodo, only theirs was the first one anybody ever wrote.
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