Chiefly a Tree Trapper, but also a Seed Sower. THE AMERICAN REDSTART "The Redstart is the dancing Warbler, just as the Chat is the joker. He never flies along in a sober, earnest fashion, as if his business was of real importance. When on the ground he skips and hops, then takes a few short steps and a little dance backward. In the trees, where he also feeds and where in some crotch he lashes his pretty nest of leaf-stalks, moss, and horse-hair, he moves about as suddenly as can be imagined, and he has a way of flying up and backward at the same time that makes him a very confusing bird to watch. In flitting among the branches, or darting into the air for gnats, his colors make him look like a tiny Oriole." "Oh, uncle! Uncle Roy!" cried Dodo, who had been looking along the path, "there are two of the dearest little birds down there, and one of them is red and black as you say the Redstart is, and the other is shaped like it but has brown and yellow feathers, and they move along as if the wind was blowing them!" [Illustration: American Redstart. 1. Male. 2. Female.] Before Dodo stopped speaking the whole party were looking where she pointed, Olive using the field-glass. "Those are a pair of Redstarts," she said, "and they are picking up ants. I saw a number of little anthills there yesterday." "A pair?" queried Nat. "They aren't the same color--one has yellow spots where the other is red." "I guess the one with the brown and yellow feathers must be the female," said Rap; "you know the Doctor told us, way back, that when the male bird wore very bright feathers, the female was oftenest plain, so that House People and cannibal birds shouldn't see her so easily when she sat on the nest." "You are right, my boy," said the Doctor, who always let the children answer each other's questions, if they could. "Madam Redstart, you see, wears an olive-brown cloak trimmed with yellow, and even her boys wear clothes like their mother's for a couple of seasons; for Heart of Nature does not allow them to come out in their red and black uniforms until they are three years old, and know the ways of the world." "Learning to name birds is harder than I thought it would be," said Nat. "Some wear different feathers in spring and fall, a lot more pairs are different to begin with, and the young ones are mixed up at first. It's worse than arithmetic"--and poor Nat looked quite discouraged. "You certainly have to remember the laws of Birdland, as well as their exceptions," answered the Doctor; "but when you have once recognized and named a bird you will carry its picture always in your mind, for the Redstarts that you will see when you are very old men and women, will be like the one that is dancing along the walk now." "Why do they call this Warbler a 'Redstart'?" asked Dodo. "Because it has a lot of red on it, and it's always starting up in a hurry," ventured Rap.