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Updated: May 6, 2025
It is laughable, almost pathetic, to see a tiny oven-bird or redstart feeding a strapping young cowbird which is several times as large as herself. She looks like a pigmy feeding a giant. In order to thrust a tidbit into his mouth she must often stand on her tiptoes. Why the diminutive caterer does not see through the fraud I can not say. She really seems to be attached to the hulking youngster.
The long-tailed swallows and the white-throated martins were with us for six months, but about the middle of October they were no more seen. All have gone southwards towards the Afric shore, seeking warmth and days of endless sunshine. Gone, too, the blackcap, the redstart, and the little fly-catcher; vanishing in the dark night, they gathered in legions and sped across the seas.
He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in not other woods in this vicinity. I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the the old trees.
"You certainly have to remember the laws of Birdland, as well as their exceptions," answered the Doctor; "but when you have once recognized and named a bird you will carry its picture always in your mind, for the Redstarts that you will see when you are very old men and women, will be like the one that is dancing along the walk now." "Why do they call this Warbler a 'Redstart'?" asked Dodo.
In England, a lame Redstart was observed in the same garden for sixteen successive years; and the astonishing precision of course which enables some birds of small size to fly from Australia to New Zealand in a day probably the longest single flight ever taken is only a part of the same mysterious instinct of direction.
From one boundary to another there was scarcely a yard of underbrush where a Thrasher or Chewink might lurk, or in which a Redstart, or a dainty Chestnut-sided Warbler, might place its nest. Not a drop of water was discoverable, where a bird might slake its thirst. Neither in limb nor bole was there a single cavity where a Titmouse, Wren, or Bluebird might construct a bed for its young.
The usual time having expired, the little sitter appeared, but if her mate did not vacate, she availed herself of the additional liberty in flitting about the tree, adding a dessert to her dinner. On one occasion he let her return twice before he left, occupying her place for eight minutes, an enormous length of time for a redstart.
The vireo and the redstart had ceased their songs; the cat-bird had flirted "good-night" from the fence; even the robin, last of all to go to bed, had uttered his final peep and vanished from sight and hearing; the sun had gone down behind the mountains across the lake, and I was listening for the whippoorwill who lived at the edge of the wood to take up the burden of song and carry it into the night.
My heart went out to the dozens of bobolink and song-sparrow babies buried under the matted grass, the little tawny thrushes wandering around cold and comfortless on the soaked ground in the woods, the warbler infants, redstart and chestnut-sided that I knew were sitting humped up and miserable in some watery place under the berry bushes, the young tanager only just out of the nest, and the two cuckoo babies, thrust out of their home at the untimely age of seven days, to shiver around on their weak blue legs.
She carefully inspected the nest to see that all was right, then slipped in, settled herself with a gentle flutter of wings, and I knew she was safe for another half hour. It was the closest watching I ever tried, so quick were the motions, so silent the going and coming. Now and then the redstart chose to stay longer at home.
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