Early in August the male begins to moult, and in the course of a few days, dressed in the greenish livery of the female, he is not distinguishable from her or his young family. In this humble garb they leave us, and do not resume their summer plumage until just as they are re-entering our southern borders, when they may be seen in various stages of transformation.
This species is extremely susceptible to cold, and in late and unusually chilly seasons large numbers often perish in their more northern haunts, as Massachusetts and Northern New York.
The nests of the Scarlet Tanager are built late in May, or early in June, on the horizontal branch of a forest tree, usually on the edge of a wood, but occasionally in an orchard. They are usually very nearly flat, five or six inches in diameter, and about two in height, with a depression of only about half an inch. They are of somewhat irregular shape, or not quite symmetrically circular. Their base is somewhat loosely constructed of coarse stems of vegetables, strips of bark, and the rootlets of wooded plants. Upon this is wrought, with more compactness and neatness, a framework, within which is the lining, of long slender fibrous roots, interspersed with which are slender stems of plants and a few strips of fine inner bark.
Mr. Nuttall describes a nest examined by him as composed of rigid stalks of weeds and slender fir-twigs tied together with narrow strips of Apocynum and pea-vine runners, and lined with slender wiry stalks of the Helianthemum, the whole so thinly plaited as readily to admit the light through the interstices.
The eggs, four or five in number, vary in length from an inch to .90, and have an average breadth of .65. Their ground-color varies from a well-marked shade of greenish-blue, to a dull white with hardly the least tinge of blue. The spots vary in size, are more or less confluent, and are chiefly of a reddish or rufous brown, intermingled with a few spots of a brownish and obscure purple.
Pyranga ludoviciana, Bonap.
LOUISIANA TANAGER.
Tanagra ludoviciana, Wilson, Am. Orn. III, 1811, 27, pl. xx, f. 1.—Bon. Obs. 1826, 95.—Aud. Orn. Biog. IV, 1838, 385; V, 1839, 90, pl. cccliv, cccc. Tanagra (Pyranga) ludoviciana, Bonap. Syn. 1828, 105.—Nuttall, Man. I, 1832, 471. Pyranga ludoviciana, Rich. List, 1837.—Bonap. List, 1838.—Aud. Syn. 1839, 137.—Ib. Birds Am. III, 1841, 211, pl. ccx.—Sclater, Pr. Zoöl. Soc. 1856, 125.—Cooper, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 145. Pyranga erythropis, Vieillot, Nouv. Dict. XXVIII, 1819, 291. (“Tanagra columbiana, Jard. ed. Wilson, I, 317,” according to Sclater, but I cannot find such name.)
Sp. Char. Bill shorter than the head. Tail slightly forked; first three quills nearly equal. Male. Yellow; the middle of the back, the wings, and the tail black. Head and neck all round strongly tinged with red; least so on the sides. A band of yellow across the middle coverts, and of yellowish-white across the greater ones; the tertials more or less edged with whitish. Female. Olive-green above, yellowish beneath; the feathers of the interscapular region dusky, margined with olive. The wings and tail rather dark brown, the former with the same marks as the male. Length, 7.25; wing, 3.60; tail, 2.85.
Hab. Western portions of United States, from the Missouri Plains to the Pacific; north to Fort Liard, south to Cape St. Lucas. Oaxaca (Scl.); Guatemala (Scl.); Orizaba (Scl.); Vera Cruz (winter, Sumichrast).