Birds and Trees of North America is Rex Brasher's seminal work, comprised of 862 watercolor paintings bound in an encyclopedic set. Between 1929 and 1932, he created 100 twelve-volume sets—1,200 individual books—and sent them to patrons across North America. Volume 10 contains 119 hand-colored plates, depicting sparrows, tanagers, swallows, waxwings, shrikes, and vireos.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; family, Tangaridae
In the TANAGERS the bill is curved and the cutting edges semi-toothed with the tip slightly hooked. Rictal bristles inconspicuous. Wings moderately long, pointed or rounded and the tail shorter than the wing. Red predominates in the adult males and adult females have the red replaced by olive green above and dull yellow below. Young birds are usually streaked beneath. The members of this large (300 species) and brilliantly colored family which fall within North America are of southerly distribution altho one species — the SCARLET TANAGER — migrates north to British Provinces. Red is the prevailing color in males; green, yellow or olive in females.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; family, Hirundinidae
SWALLOWS have flat triangular bills, the gape extending below the eye. Wings extremely long, when closed reaching to or beyond the forked tail. They are pre-eminently air-minded and feed entirely on the wing. They migrate in the daytime and unlike most of our other birds they roost at night in some favorite location.
With lustrous plumage, compact streamline forms and extraordinary wing development, Swallows are familiar and alluring birds. Like Hummingbirds their feet are poorly developed and they spend most of their time awing. Their remarkable mastery of the air enables them to cover great distances quickly and the old belief that they hibernated in mud arose from their presence on warm days in late winter. They simply followed the thermometer north and returned south when the temperature fell.
Night observation of migratory birds finds no Swallows, they reversing the usual order of flying by night and feeding by day.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; families, Bombycillidae and Ptilogonatidae
The WAXWINGS have small almost Warblerlike bills. Their wings are long and pointed and tails even or slightly rounded. The secondaries are tipt with sealing wax-like appendages and these peculiar shaft extensions are present sometimes on the tail feathers and independent of sex or season.
The plumage is soft and velvety, beautifully blended, and they perhaps are the most beautifully gowned of all our birds. Altho they frequently indulge in aerial sorties after insects, the rictal bristles are absent.
The Phainopepla is the only one of four specimens forming the SILKY FLYCATCHER FAMILY which extends its range from Mexico into the United States. Altho allied to the Waxwings they differ in having rounded wings and well developed bristles at the gape: their habits, however, are very similar.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; family, Laniidae
SHRIKES are feathered Attilas — bold, bloodthirsty and cruel villains. They have all the rapacity of Sharpshin Hawks but lack the verve and dash of those arch freebooters. They are placed among song birds because of their vocal organs and are said to “warble." I never have heard them emit notes which could be called a song! "Butcher Bird" is an appropriate popular name. Shrikes, Sharpshins and Cooper Hawks are the most cruel and murderous trio among our North American birds. If Shrikes were numerous, Providence would be busy watching the fall of Sparrows and other little birds under their hooked lethal bills.
Wings: short, rounded; tails: long, rounded or graduated. Their practice of impaling insects, small birds and mammals upon thorns gives them a rather unenviable position among Song Birds. The most plausible explanation of this peculiar habit is lack of strength in the feet to hold the victim while tearing it to pieces.
Order, Passeres: suborder, Oscines; family, Vireonidae
VIREOS are a remarkably homogeneous family. Coloring in subdued olives, grays and pale yellows constant in sexes and young. There are differences in bill, wing and feet pronounced in the hand but scarcely distinguishable in the field. Identification is largely a matter of actions. They are small (within six inches) and after the Warblers the most attractive of our forest-loving birds altho their unobtrusive ways render them far less known than their vivacious cousins. They all build pensile or semi-pensile nests of bark strips, vegetable fibres and grass; some species decorate the outside with cocoons, bits of paper or moss. The eggs are white with bold brown and lavender spots, lines or blotches, with the single exception of Blackcap Vireo, whose eggs are plain white. Because of this similarity, breeding descriptions have been omitted as useless repetition. They are strictly insectivorous.
Behind the taxonomic Coues dwelt a poet's soul: — in “the quaint and curious ditty of White-eye,” “the earnest voluble strains of Red-eye,” “the tender secret the Warbling Vireo confides to the passing breeze — he is insensible who does not hear the echo of thots he never clothes in words.”
In the Vireos the bill is variable in size, rather strong with a slight hook at end. The wings are ample, pointed and longer than the even, slightly rounded, double-rounded or notched tail. They are active and industrious flycatchers and some species sing during the warmest part of the day when all other birds are silent.