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"Because it has a lot of red on it, and it's always starting up in a hurry," ventured Rap. "That is not the real reason," said the Doctor. "The name comes from a German word that means 'red tail, and rightly belongs to a bird of Europe that is never found in this country. Our bird has some red on the tail, but I really think that Rap's answer is the better one." The American Redstart
I noted but two warblers' nests during that season, one of the black-throated blue-back and one of the redstart, the latter built in an apple-tree but a few yards from a little rustic summer-house where I idle away many summer days. The lively little birds, darting and flashing about, attracted my attention for a week before I discovered their nest.
Thus pondering, I suddenly remembered that I had never seen his spouse, and that monsieur and madame do not dress alike in the bird world any more than in the human. I marked the points; I consulted the books; there could be no doubt this was the little dame herself, and her mate had been too clever to come to her aid. The structure on the apple bough was the redstart homestead.
So she rushed frantically hither and thither in mad redstart fashion, brought her morsel and administered it, and then darted angrily after the enemy, who appeared as often as she did, every time with a tidbit for that pampered youngster. This double duty seemed almost too much for the redstart.
The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common folk down below.
I always found the little dame in possession, and generally the lord and master gleaning food in redstart fashion; flitting around a branch, darting behind a leaf, over and under a twig, tail spread to keep his balance during these jerky movements, his bright oriole colors flashing as he dashed through a patch of sunlight, a beautiful object, but a perfectly silent one.
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