. The birds' calendar . hoir the phocbe alone, for good and sufficientreason, as yet remains as dumb as an oyster. A few days after the return of the gold-crest I discovered a species of kinglet thatI had never seen before—the ruby-crowned,somewhat more rare, and, as it seemed to me,though perhaps from the circumstance of nov-elty, more beautiful than even the ^ two kinglets are of the same size (aboutfour inches long), and the smallest of all ourbirds except the humming-bird. Witli thesame general coloring as the other, the ruby-crowned has a suffusion of yellow, and, insteadof
. The birds' calendar . hoir the phocbe alone, for good and sufficientreason, as yet remains as dumb as an oyster. A few days after the return of the gold-crest I discovered a species of kinglet thatI had never seen before—the ruby-crowned,somewhat more rare, and, as it seemed to me,though perhaps from the circumstance of nov-elty, more beautiful than even the ^ two kinglets are of the same size (aboutfour inches long), and the smallest of all ourbirds except the humming-bird. Witli thesame general coloring as the other, the ruby-crowned has a suffusion of yellow, and, insteadof the black and yellow markings on the head,the male has a deep red flame on the the specification of its coloring does nottouch the core of its daintiness as shown infigure and motion. The habits of the two arethe same, and under the circumstance of itsnot being very much rarer than the gold-crest it is a singular fact that perhaps in notmore than three or four instances has its nestever been discovered. I02. GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS April My attention was first called to the bird byhearing a remarkably clear and unfamiliar songat a distance, and I started inevitably to dis-cover its origin. The characteristic part of thesong is a triplet of tones represented by thefirst, third, and fifth of the scale (these inter-vals being remarkably precise), uttered in rapidsuccession and repeated three or four introduction of the song is an indescribableand intricate modulation, but the triplet wasnever absent, and indeed was sometimes givenwithout the introduction. It seems almost in-credible that so full and resonant a tone canissue from so tiny a throat. For a few daysthis was the finest songster in the Park, rival-ling the white-throated and the fox sparrows inits delicious clearness ; but the bird made onlya flying visit, and was soon gone. Its greaterrarity, as compared with the gold-crest, islargely due to the fact that, whereas the latter isa winter resident, t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1894
