Bill black; feet and claws dusky or blackish brown. Upper part of the head, and hind neck dull greyish brown; upper parts brownish-grey; wings and tail dusky brown, tinged with grey, the margins of the quills and tail-feathers greyish-white. Cheeks of a paler tint than the head; all the lower parts brownish-white, the sides tinged with reddish.
Length to end of tail 4 1/2 inches; wing from flexure 1 10 1/2/12; tail 2 2/12; bill along the ridge 4 1/2/12; tarsus 7/12; hind toe 2 3/4/12, its claw 2 3/4/12; middle toe 4/12, its claw 9/12.
Adult Female. Plate CCCLIII.
The Female is rather smaller, and its colours are somewhat paler.
A nest presented to me by Mr Nuttall is of a cylindrical form nine inches long, three and a half in diameter. It is suspended from the fork of a small twig, and is composed externally of hypna, lichens, and fibrous roots, interwoven so as to present a smoothish surface, and with a few stems of grasses, and some feathers of Garrulus Stelleri intermixed. The aperture, which is at the top, does not exceed seven-eighths of an inch in diameter; but for two-thirds of the length of the nest, the internal diameter is two inches. This part is lined with the cottony down of willows, carefully thrust into the interstices, and contains a vast quantity of soft feathers chiefly of Steller’s Jay, with some others, among which can be distinguished those of Tetrao urophasianus, Columba fasciata, and Tanagra ludoviciana. The eggs, nine in number, are pure white, 4 1/2/8 of an inch in length, by 3 1/2/8 broad, and are rather pointed at the small end.
LOUISIANA TANAGER.
Tanagra Ludoviciana, Wils.
PLATE CCCLIV. Male.
Wilson was the first ornithologist who figured this handsome bird. From his time until the return of Dr Townsend from the Columbia River no specimen seems to have been procured. That gentleman forwarded several males in much finer condition than those brought by Lewis and Clarke. Some of these I purchased, and, on his return to Philadelphia, I was presented with a female by my young friend Dr Trudeau, of Louisiana, a representation of which you will find in Plate CCCC. fig 4. The only account of this species is by Thomas Nuttall, who, however, was unacquainted with the female.
“We first observed this fine bird in a thick belt of wood near Lorimier’s Fork of the Platte, on the 4th of June, at a considerable distance to the east of the first chain of the Rocky Mountains (or Black Hills), so that the species in all probability continues some distance down the Platte. We have also seen them very abundant in the spring, in the forests of the Columbia, below Fort Vancouver. On the Platte they appeared shy and almost silent, not having there apparently commenced breeding. About the middle of May we observed the males in small numbers scattered through the dark pine forests of the Columbia, restless, shy, and flitting when approached, but at length more sedentary when mated. We frequently traced them out by their song, which is a loud, short, slow, but pleasing warble, not much unlike the song of the Common Robin, delivered from the tops of the lofty fir-trees. This music continues at short intervals throughout the whole forenoon, during which time our songster is busily engaged in quest of such coleopterous insects and larvæ as are to be found on the young branches of the trees he frequents, and which require an assiduous and long-continued search to gratify his wants. Of the female and nest we are still ignorant, though they are in all probability very similar to those of our other known species. We have not seen this bird as far south as Upper California, though it may exist in the thicker forests remote from the coast, which we had no opportunity of visiting.”
Louisiana Tanager, Tanagra Ludoviciana, Wils. Amer. Ornith. vol. iii. p. 27, pl. 20, fig. 1.