BLACK-CAPPED VIREO 223 



C. D. Bunker (1910) describes somewhat similar nesting haunts in 

 Bhiine County, Okla. : "In the locality of which I speak, the canyons 

 were about three hundred and twenty feet deep, with outcroppings 

 of gypsum rock from bottom to top, with a strong salt stream running 

 at the bottom. The only fresh water for miles was a spring on the 

 ridge, a quarter of a mile above the head of the canyon. The canyon 

 walls, and gulches leading to the canyons, w^ere studded with clumps 

 of bushes, mostly dog-wood, scrub-oak and similar shrubs forming 

 ideal cover for vireos, of which Vireo heUi was not uncommon. On 

 one occasion a nest of a Bell Vireo was found in the same bush v/ith 

 that of a Black-cap." 



George F. Simmons (1025) says that its haunts in central Texas 

 are "typically, scrub-oak ridges, ravines, and canyons. Hottest imag- 

 inable places on sterile ridges or backbones among peaks of the small 

 mountains or limestone hills of central Texas, among clumps of scrub 

 oak, cedar, broad-leaved deciduous bushes, and chaparral brush, scan- 

 tily scattered among small mountain live oaks and shaded mountain 

 Spanish oak thickets on steep, sterile, rocky slopes of peaks which 

 break in endless strata down to the valleys below ; scrub oak thickets ; 

 oak thickets along bottoms of dry ravines; vine-grown thickets on 

 canyon walls." 



Nesting.— Wq are indebted to Mr. Brewster (1870) for the first pub- 

 lished account of the nesting habits of this vireo, in which he says that 

 "to Mr. Werner is due all credit for discovering the first authentic 

 nest of the Black-capped Vireo known to science. Those received by 

 Mr. Ricksecker were collected May 2G and June 13 respectively." 

 That was in 1878, in Comal County, Tex. The former came to Mr. 

 Brewster and was said to have been built in a "red-oak tree." Mr. 

 Brewster describes it as follows : "It is suspended in the fork of two 

 very slender twigs, and is in every way after the usual type of Viieonine 

 architecture. In a few points of detail, however, it differs slightly 

 from any Vireo's nest that I have seen. Although, generally speak- 

 ing, of the ordinary cup-shaped form, the walls are unusually thick 

 and firmly felted, and the entrance being verj^ much contracted, the 

 bulging sides arch over the mouth of the nest, giving to the whole a 

 nearly spherical shape." 



After confessing his lack of knowledge of Texas botany, he writes: 



The groat bulk of the structure, however, is made up of line strips of reddish 

 bark, probably from some species of cedar, layers of small, delicate, bleached 

 leaves of a former year's growth, a few coarse grasses, one or two catkins, and 

 several spiders' cocoons. Tliese are firmly bound together, and the whole 

 attached to the forked twigs above by fine shreds of vegetable fibre, cater- 

 pillars' or spiders' silk, and sheep's wool. The lining is of fiine grasses and 

 what appear to be the slender needles of some coniferous tree, the whole being 

 arranged with that wonderful smoothness and care which belong to the highest 

 order of nestbuilders alone. * * * Greatest external diameter, 2.90 ; ex- 



