Setophaga ruticilla
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
♂ Adult male.— Head, throat, and back lustrous black; sides of breast and flanks reddish-orange; large bar across wing and tail light salmon; tips of tail-feathers black for a third of their length; belly white.
♀ Adult female.— Head gray; throat grayish-white, orange and salmon replaced by yellow.
♂Young male .— Resembles the female until the third year.
Nest, a soft cup, generally in the crotch of a tree or sapling from ten to thirty feet up.
Eggs, thickly spotted with dark brown, chiefly around the larger end.
The Redstart is a common summer resident throughout New York and New England, absent only at high altitudes. It arrives early in May and remains through September. The male Redstart’s bright colors always attract attention and excite admiration, and, unlike its rival, the Blackburnian Warbler, it may easily be seen by the beginner. It is common in the shrubbery about dwellings, and in its restless course flies from twig to twig, sometimes pursuing an insect to the ground at the observer’s feet. Both sexes have a habit of keeping the tail spread like a fan, so that the yellow or salmon band is very conspicuous.
It needs practice to distinguish the song of this species from that of the Yellow Warbler, often its neighbor about our houses. The Redstart’s song is less complicated: weelsee’-see’ is its shortest form; wee’-see-wee’-see-wee’ is another. All the phrases are on one key, and are almost never followed by the additional phrase with which the song of the Yellow Warbler ends. The male in his first spring wears the gray and yellow of the female, so that one often hears the song uttered apparently by the female.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)