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Birds and Nature, Vol. XI, No 2, February 1902

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<h2 id="c2">THE BLUE-HEADED VIREO. <br/><span class="small">(<i>Vireo solitarius.</i>)</span></h2> <p>The Blue-headed Vireo, or its varieties, of which there are several, frequent nearly the whole of North America. The typical form of the species, that of our illustration, has a range covering Eastern North America and extending westward to the great plains. It breeds from Southern New England and the lake states northward to Hudson Bay and southward in the higher altitudes of the Alleghenies. It passes the winter in Cuba, Mexico and Central America. The Blue-headed Vireo is frequently called the Solitary Vireo, or Greenlet, because of its retiring habits. It is a bird of the forest and stays very close in these quiet retreats. Yet it is, as a rule, easy of approach, seeming to possess both curiosity and confidence. Mr. Bradford Torrey writes with enthusiasm regarding the pretty habits of this bird. He says: “Its most winning trait is its tameness. Wood bird as it is, it will sometimes permit the greatest familiarities. Two birds I have seen which allowed themselves to be stroked in the freest manner while sitting on the eggs, and which ate from my hand as readily as any pet canary; but I have seen others that complained loudly whenever I approached their tree. Perhaps they had had sad experiences.”</p> <p>Possessing a happy and cheerful disposition, this species, like the other vireos, sings while working. Listening to them, we are reminded of the lines in “The Vision of Sir Launfal”—</p> <div class="verse"> <p class="t0">“The little birds sang as if it were</p> <p class="t0">The one day of summer in all the year,</p> <p class="t">And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.”</p> </div> <p>Fortunate, indeed, is he who has the pleasure of watching this Vireo working upon its home and uttering “inexpressibly sweet and tender love notes.”</p> <p>Mr. Thomas M. Brewer says that the Blue-headed Vireo “usually makes a nest of coarse materials somewhat loosely put together, covering it with lichens, thus assimilating it to the moss-covered limb from which it is suspended.” The materials used, however, are not always the same. One nest, of which Mr. Brewer speaks, was “covered over, as if cemented, with bits of newspaper.” The external portion of another was “composed of the silky cover of cocoons, woven into a homogeneous and clothlike fabric, by some process quite inexplicable.” The nests are frequently constructed of fine bark fibers, withered grass and pine needles woven together with moss and lined with plant down, fine grass and small, fibrous roots.</p> <p>Much has been written regarding the song of this handsome bird of the woods. The words of Mr. Torrey perhaps best describe it. He says: “The Solitary’s song is matchless for the tenderness of its cadence, while in peculiarly happy moments the bird indulges in a continuous warble that is really enchanting.” It has, too, a musical chatter and a pretty trilled whistle.</p> <p>In Mr. Keyser’s experience “the song was varied and lively, sometimes running high in the scale, and had not that absent-minded air which marks the roundelay of the warbling vireo. It is much more intense and expressive.”</p> <p>Mr. Brewer describes the song as a “prolonged and very peculiar ditty, repeated at frequent intervals and always identical. It begins with a lively and pleasant warble, of a gradually ascending scale, which at a certain pitch suddenly breaks down into a falsetto note. The song then rises again in a single note and ceases.”</p> <p>The notes of the female suggest to Mr. Burroughs “the bleating of a tiny lambkin.” To Mr. Nuttall “its song seems to be intermediate between that of the red-eyed and the yellow-breasted species, having the ‘preai, preai,’ of the latter and the fine variety of the former in its tones.” To all “the music of the Solitary Vireo is delicious.”</p> <div class="fig"> id="fig1"> <ANTIMG src="images/i11200.jpg" alt="" width-obs="342" height-obs="718" /> <p class="caption">BLUE-HEADED VIREO <br/>(Vireo solitarius.) <br/>⅗ Life-size. <br/><span class="small">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.</span></p> </div> <div class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />

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