American Redstart
Muscicapa ruticilla [now Setophaga ruticilla Linnaeus]
Folio edition, plate 40
“This is one of the most lively, as well as one of the handsomest, of our Flycatchers. It keeps in perpetual motion, hunting along the branches sidewise, jumping to either side in search of insects and larvae, opening its beautiful tail at every movement which it makes, then closing it, and flitting it from side to side, just allowing the transparent beauty of the feathers to be seen for a moment.”
John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, or An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America (Edinburgh: A. Black [et al.], 1831), vol. 1, p. 202.
View bird in National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds.
An egg clutch of this species, collected by Audubon, is housed within the collections of the Natural History Museum in London.
