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He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got rid of its hoarseness.
Many others alighted on the fence; the junco, with his pretty brown bantling and his charming little trilling song; the crow baby, with its funny ways and queer cry of "ma-a-a;" the redstart, who "Folds and unfolds his twinkling tail in sport;" the flicker mamma, with her "merry pitter-patter" and her baby as big as herself.
It would not be easy to exaggerate, for instance, the flashings and evolutions of the redstart when it arrives in May, or the acting and posing of the catbird, or the gesticulations of the yellow breasted chat, or the nervous and emphatic character of the large-billed water thrush, or the many pretty attitudes of the great Carolina wren; but to give the same dramatic character to the demure little song sparrow, or to the slow moving cuckoo, or to the pedestrian cowbird, or to the quiet Kentucky warbler, as Audubon has done, is to convey a wrong impression of these birds.
But a glance at the "cause of all this woe" was more than his courage could endure; one cry escaped him, and then a streak of black and white passed over the road out of sight. Next came a redstart, himself the head of a family, for he too had his beak full of provisions.
She plainly understood his intention, for the instant he appeared she darted off, although he did not touch the nest. All day the weight of responsibility kept this rover at home; he might generally be seen on the lower branches of his tree, darting about in perfect silence; but once or twice I saw him actually loitering, a pleasant pastime of which I never suspected a redstart.
At nightfall they congregate, like the red-winged blackbirds, in the sand-bar willows on the river islands. Daintily flitting from one branch to another, the redstart weaves threads of reddish gold and black, like strands of night and noon, among the old trees.
Had he been killed in these carefully protected and fenced woods, where no guns or collectors were allowed, and trespass notices were as plentiful as blackberries? Not by shooting we were sure; we should have heard a gun at the house. Had, then, an owl paid a twilight visit, and could a redstart be surprised? Or could, perchance, a squirrel have stolen upon him unaware? We shall never know.
"Now look," she whispered, pointing to a nest in plain sight. "Why that's the redstart nest we saw yesterday from the road," I answered in the same tone, somewhat disappointed, it must be said, for redstart nests were on about every third sapling in the woods. "Yes; but see what's going on," she added, excitedly.
"Now we come to three very jolly Warblers with bright feathers and perfectly distinct ways of their own. They are the Maryland Yellow-throat, the Yellow-breasted Chat, and the American Redstart.
Their redstart also builds under the eaves of houses; their starling in church steeples and in holes in walls; several thrushes resort to sheds to nest; and jackdaws breed in the crannies of the old architecture, and this in a much milder climate than our own. They have in that country no birds that answer to our tiny, lisping wood-warblers, genus Dendroica, nor to our vireos, Vireonidoe.
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