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The trees melt together into great masses of blackness; in the dark-blue sky the first stars come timidly out. All the birds are asleep. Only the redstarts and the nuthatches are still chirping drowsily.... And now they too are still. The last echoing call of the pee-wit rings over our heads; the oriole's melancholy cry sounds somewhere in the distance; then the nightingale's first note.
Perhaps he has fallen into the fault of pursuing his sport too intensely, and tramped along the stream looking for nothing but fish. Perhaps this part of the grove has really been deserted by its feathered inhabitants, scared away by a prowling hawk or driven out by nest-hunters. But now, without notice, the luck changes. A surprise-party of redstarts breaks into full play around him.
All these things formed only a setting or background for the wild life near by. The birds are the little people that peep out at me, or pause and regard me curiously in this great temple of trees, wrens, chippies, robins, bluebirds, catbirds, redstarts, and now and then rarer visitants.
Reason in animals. Redstart, American, breeding in immature plumage. Redstarts, new mates found by. Reduvidae, stridulation of. Reed-bunting, head-feathers of the male; attacked by a bullfinch. Reefs, fishes frequenting. Reeks, H., retention of horns by breeding deer; cow rejected by a bull; destruction of piebald rabbits by cats. Regeneration, partial, of lost parts in man. Regent bird.
Under the oaks there appears nothing but red stones, as if the trees were rooted in them; under the boughs probably the grass does not cover the rock as it does on the opposite side. There mountain-ashes flowered in loose order on the green slope. Redstarts perched on them, darting out to seize passing insects.
No other songster save the vireo is so prodigal of his minstrelsy. Occasionally we caught the loud, querulous notes of the great crested flycatcher. Maryland yellow throats sang, "witchery, witchery, witchery" down among the bushy fence rows. Wren notes fell like silvery drops of water through the sunlit air, and redstarts made the place ring with their rich clear notes.
We likewise became interested in a couple of redstarts, who, waxing bold, would tap at the casement, bidding us come and admire their young in the nest under the portico. This was during our first visit: on our second we found some dire misfortune had befallen the mother, the children and the nest. The Hofbauer feared some servant must have destroyed them.
Both species love to disport themselves on rocks and boulders lapped by the gentle-flowing stream in the valley, or lashed by the torrent on the hillside. Like all redstarts, these constantly flirt the tail. Throughout the early summer the cock makes the wooded hillsides ring with his blackbird-like melody. The grey-winged ouzel is a near relative of the English blackbird.
One of them is his habit of spreading out his wings and tail as he perches or flits about in the trees, as if he were anxious to display the fiery trimmings that so elegantly set off his little black suit. Blood will tell, for I have seen the young redstarts imitating their parents by spreading out their odd, croppy tails in a comical way.
He derives his name from the fact that his nest, set on the ground, is globular in form, with the entrance at one side, giving it the appearance of a small oven. The gay redstarts, which seem to be so tame and confiding in the early spring, turn into veritable eremites in the breeding season, seeking the most secluded portions of the woods as their habitat.
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