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SCARLET TANAGER.

Tue scarlet tanager, or summer red-bird, is one
of the most beautiful of its race; the male in full plumage
being scarlet-red, with the wings and tail black.

From the beginning to the middle of May this richly-
coloured bird makes its appearance in Pennsylvania, and
several other of the American States; avoiding the
neighbourhood of human habitations, unless perhaps the
skirts of the orchard, where he sometimes, however,
builds his nest and takes a taste of the early and
inviting, though forbidden, cherries.

“Among all the birds,” says Wilson “that inhabit our
woods, there is none that strikes the eye of a stranger,
or even a native, with so much brilliancy as this. Seen
among the green leaves, with the light falling strongly
on his plumage, he really appears beautiful. If he has
little of melody in his notes to charm us, he has nothing
in them to disgust. His manners are modest, easy, and
inoffensive; benefitting the husbandman, by the daily
destruction in spring of many noxious insects; and when
winter approaches, he is no plundering dependent, but seeks
in a distant country for that sustenance which the severity
of the season denies to his industry in this. He is a
striking ornament to our rural scenery, and none of the
meanest of our rural songsters.

‘Among the thick foliage of the tree,” says Nuttall,
“in which he seeks support and shelter, from the lofty
branches, at times, we hear his almost monotonous
tship-witee, tship-idee, or tshukadee, tshukadee, repeated
at short intervals, and in a pensive under-tone, height-