Well, let Angelina's hat pass for what it is worth to her. It is no more than the redbirds have had to submit to all their life history. There isn't a savage tribe but has made use of bright feathers for dress, either in skins or quills. The dark-skinned native is "dressed for church" if he wear a single feather tuft in his scalp-lock, or a frail shoulder-cape of crimson breasts, stripped from the bird in the bush.
It may be the tanager has a sort of dull instinct to hide himself on this account in the deep foliage, deeming it the better part of valor to keep out of harm's way when a nature-lover sits on the toadstool-bedecked log to watch for him.
His mate, of dull greenish yellow, has less enemies in the disguise of admirers, and her little heart has no call to flutter when the so-called nature-lover haunts the woods. She goes on with her nest-building on the arm of a maple or even lonely apple-tree, making haste, for well she knows the season is short in which to raise their single brood. By the middle of August they must be off, have the wings of the young grown sufficient strength; and yet the old birds only arrived from their warmer clime in the South when May was half over, or later.
Like the grosbeak's, the tanager's nest is loosely built of twigs and stalks, transparent from below, as if ventilation were more necessary than softness. The dull blue eggs, spotted with brown or purple, may be distinctly seen from beneath when the sun is shining overhead. But why worry the mother bird by long gazing? She is in great distress. Were the ear of the nature-lover properly tuned he would understand her to be saying, "They're mine, they're mine. I beg, I beg. Don't touch, don't take."
But in due time the young are juveniles, not nurslings, and they leave the nest, too soon the worse for wear on account of its careless build. At first the thin dress of the young is greenish yellow, like the mother, and they may pass unnoticed amid the late summer foliage. The male juveniles, during their first year, somewhere change to brighter hues in spots and dashes of red and black, as if their clothes had been patched with left-overs from their fathers' wardrobes. The fathers themselves, before they fly to the warm South, drop their scarlet feathers, like tatters, amid the ferns and blue-berries, and girls pick them up for the adorning of doll hats. No merrier sight, and none more innocent of character, than this of little girls searching for what is left of the beautiful summer visitor, picking up, as it were, the shreds of his memory. These scarlet feathers, together with those of the summer yellowbird, placed in layers or helter-skelter in a case of gauze, make a fairy pillow for winter times, pretty to look at. They come with thistle-down and milkweed tassels, and sumach droppings and maple leaves, and the first oozing of spruce gum in the woods. Yes, and beechnuts and belated goldenrod, and the first frosts that nip the cheek of the cranberry in the bog.
And the huckleberry patch is littered with the tiny plumes, for tanagers love the huckleberries that leave no stain on their greenish yellow lips. These huckleberries are their chief food in late berry-time, coming, as they do, when the juveniles need a change in their meat diet before the long flight ahead of them. Up to this date they made good, square meals from fat beetles and other insects big enough to "pay for catching." That bumblebees and wasps are endowed with sharp points in their character does not forbid the use of them for tanager food; though it is presumed that the stings are either squeezed out, or the insect killed, before it is fed to the nestlings, as we have noticed in the case of the phœbes.
In these late summer days the singer punctuates his song often and long, for he must recuperate for his autumn journey. More than this, he must protect his young ones. He therefore loses the shyness of spring, and follows the juveniles about, feeding them and teaching them to shift for themselves, and protecting them with word and sign. His whole care is for his family, and hard is a cruel world indeed whose human inhabitants can molest him. His scarlet cloth is forgotten. He will follow his young even into captivity, and there feed them through bar or window. But not a fascinating prisoner is the tanager; one grows accustomed to his bright coat, and as it is seen against the pane in winter-time, contrasting with the whiteness of the snow, seems to reproach the hand that imprisoned it. When one stops to think of it, scarcely a bird in captivity, unless it be the canary to the manner born, gives the satisfaction and amusement anticipated. It is the going and coming of the wild birds that make more than half the fun. The sudden surprise of spring; the reluctant departure of autumn, with the hope of intermediate days—there is charm in all this keeping of Nature's order.
Well, good by, sweet scarlet tanager. Sing us back your farewell note of "Wait, wait." We shall see you again when the early cherries are ripe, if not sooner. The beetles and bumbles and the grasshoppers will be watching out for you, and the terrible hornet shall double his armor-plate to suit the strength of your strong beak. It will be of no avail for the big black beetle to hide beneath the iron kettle he carries on his back, and the bum of the big, yellow bumblebee will serve only as its call-note, while the broad sword of the hornet will have no time to unsheath itself at sight of you. Good by, tanager.