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Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there there's a scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife who'd be so darn chummy as you are.
The tanager looked on all this with some interest, but expressed no more gratitude at being protected than he had resentment at being driven from the bath. Soon I noticed a certain chattering talk from the small bird that he had never indulged in excepting to another of his kind his companion when he first came to me. It was very low but almost continuous, and was plainly addressed to the tanager.
One season a scarlet tanager that had failed with her first nest in the woods came to try again in a little cherry tree that stood in the open, a few feet from my cabin, where I could almost touch the nest with my hand as I passed. But in my absence she again came to grief, some marauder, probably a red squirrel, taking her eggs.
Far different from the cool unconcern of the crimson-headed tanager were the manners of another red-headed dweller on the mountain. The green-tailed towhee he is called in the books, though the red of his head is much more conspicuous than the green of his tail. In this bird the high-bred repose of his neighbor was replaced by the most fussy restlessness.
There sang the scarlet tanager every morning through July, gleaming among the leaves of the tallest trees, his olive-clad spouse nowhere to be seen, presumably occupied with domestic affairs. There the Acadian flycatcher pursued his calling, fluttering his wings and uttering a sweet little murmur when he alighted.
The grove of oaks at the end of the street suggested Indians, hunting, snow-shoes, and she struggled past the earth-banked cottages to the open country, to a farm and a low hill corrugated with hard snow. In her loose nutria coat, seal toque, virginal cheeks unmarked by lines of village jealousies, she was as out of place on this dreary hillside as a scarlet tanager on an ice-floe.
Some of the sparrows still sing, and occasionally across the hot fields, from a tall tree in the edge of the forest, comes the rich note of the scarlet tanager. This tropical-colored bird loves the hottest weather, and I hear him even in dog-days. The remainder of the summer is the carnival of the swallows and flycatchers.
Little streams flashing in silver or gold in the sunlight, flowed down to the greater rivers, and on a bush a scarlet tanager fluttered like a flash of flame. A youth, uncommon in size and bearing, stepped into a little opening, and looked about with the easy, natural caution belonging to the native of the forest who knows that danger is always near.
Cicely sat rapt while he pictured the bird's winter pilgrimage, with glimpses of the seas and islands that fled beneath him till his long southern flight ended in the dim glades of the equatorial forests. "Oh, what a good life how I should like to be a wander-bird, and look down people's chimneys twice a year!" Justine laughed, tilting her head back to catch a last glimpse of the tanager.
Just within the edge of the Green Forest he caught sight of something which for the time being put all thought of Farmer Brown's boy out of his head. Fluttering on the ground was a bird than whom not even Glory the Cardinal was more beautiful. It was about the size of Redwing the Blackbird. Wings and tail were pure black and all the rest was a beautiful scarlet. It was Redcoat the Tanager.
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