We dream in joy, and wake in love,
Nor know the rage that yells above.
There's quiet in the deep.
John G. C. Brainard.
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| FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. | AMERICAN REDSTART. (Setophaga ruticilla.) Life-size. | COPYRIGHT 1900, BY A. W. MUMFORD, CHICAGO. |
THE AMERICAN REDSTART.
(Setophaga ruticilla.)
Contemporaneous with the blossoming out of the wild plum, the early Richmond cherry and a rich and diversified profusion of woodland flowers, perhaps better exemplified on this occasion by such interesting types as the little Claytonia, or spring-beauty, the rue-anemone and the trilliums, both T. erectum and grandiflorum, with perhaps a few belated blossoms of the hepatica, is the advent of this interesting little bird among us, which here in Northeastern Illinois usually plans its arrival somewhere near the closing days of the first week in May.
Its generic name, Setophaga, interpreted into plainer English, means a devourer of insects, and, were we to select from among the large and varied assortment of birds comprising the bulk of our warbler hosts a form most elegant and expressive of gayety, sprightliness, and, in a measure, frivolity, we could not go far wrong in determining upon this species so easily outclassing all others as the most brilliantly colored member of that numerously large and interesting family, the Mniotiltidae.