THE WARBLING VIREO. 311 



The Warbling Vireo is indeed allied to the genus of 

 the Nightingale {Sylvia), whose song, from the descrip- 

 tion of Mr. White in his Natural History of Selbourne, 

 bears considerable resemblance to that of the Black-capt 

 Flycatcher {3Iuscicapa alhicollis of Temminck.) When 

 offended or irritated, our bird utters an angry Hshay Hshay, 

 like the Cat-Bird and the other Vireos, and sometimes 

 makes a loud snapping with his bill. The nest of the War- 

 bling Vireo is generally pendulous, and ambitiously and 

 securely suspended at great elevations. In our Elms I 

 have seen one of these airy cradles at the very summit 

 of one of the most gigantic, more than 100 feet from the 

 ground. At other times they are not more than 50 to 70 

 feet high. The only nest I have been able to examine 

 was made externally of flat and dry sedge-grass blades, 

 for which, as I have observed, is occasionally substituted 

 strings of bass. These dry blades and strips are con- 

 fined and tied into the usual circular form by caterpillars' 

 silk, blended with bits of wool, silk-weed lint, and an 

 accidental and sparing mixture of vernal -grass tops and 

 old apple blossoms. It was then very neatly lined with 

 the small flat blades of the meadow grass, called Poa com- 

 pressa. The eggs, 4, on which the bird was already sit- 

 ting, were pure white, with a few small blackish purple 

 spots of two sizes, and some confluent, straggling, hair-like 

 lines, disposed chiefly around the greater end. The size 

 of these eggs is very perceptibly smaller than those of 

 the Red-Eyed Vireo, in one of whose nests I have seen 

 two eggs of this species deposited, as well as one laid by 

 the Cow Troopial ! an accidental parasitic practice, 

 urged probably by the neglect of not providing a nest for 

 the immediate occasion. 



The length of this bird is about 5 inches. Above pale olive-green, 

 much mixed with ash on the neck and shoulders. Line over the 



