WHITE-EYED VIREO 229 



were surprised to hear the unmistakable song of a white-eyed vireo. A 

 thorough search resulted in finding the nest, suspended from a forked 

 twig of a small wild cherry sapling, 20 inches from the gi'ound, in a 

 little thicket of underbrush and briers between two of the arborvitae. 

 The nest was a beautiful structure, woven mainly of strips of inner bark 

 and grasses, mixed with soft plant fibers and plant down, bound to- 

 gether with spider's silk, and lined with fine grasses; it was prettily 

 decorated externally with green mosses, lichens, bits of paper, and 

 pieces of wasps' nests, a large piece of the latter forming a tip at the 

 bottom of the long nest (pi. 25) . While I was photographing the nest, 

 both birds appeared; they seemed much concerned and were quite 

 fearless, one of them alighting on the nest in front of the camera. The 

 nest contained four fresh eggs. 



Another eastern Massachusetts nest is recorded in Frederic H. Ken- 

 nard's notes for May 26, 1912. It was placed in the middle of a tangle 

 of Viburnimi. dentatum bushes, about 3 feet from the ground ; it was 

 attached to a twig so slender that when the bird sat on the nest, 

 the twig hung down at a sharp angle; fortunately, the nest was too 

 deep for the single egg to fall out. The bird sat fearlessly while four 

 people walked to within six feet of the nest, and he almost crawled 

 under her before she left. 



While collecting with W. George F. Harris, near Old Lyme, Conn., 

 on June 2, 1934, he found a white-eyed vireo's nest, about 3 feet above 

 the ground, suspended from a fork of a horizontal branch of a small 

 yellow birch, in a briery thicket. It was beautifully made and very 

 deep ; the exterior was composed of small pieces of rotted wood and 

 shreds of bark held together with cobwebs; it was lined with fine 

 plant stems and a few pieces of fine dry gi'ass. 



Frank W. Braund has sent me the data for two of the nests in his 

 collection; one nest, taken in Adams County, Ohio, on June 6, 1939, 

 was in a small crotch at the end of a limb in a dense wild plumb tree, 

 4 feet up, in a honey locust grove; the other was taken at St. Peters- 

 burg, Florida, on April 22, 1942, in an extensive field of gardenias; 

 it was 2 feet above the ground, attached to a small crotch at the end of a 

 branch of a large gardenia. 



M. G. Vaiden, of Rosedale, Miss., writes to me of his experience with 

 the white-eyed vireo in his State : "I have record of 11 nests. Generally 

 this bird nests in or near openings in heavy woodland among the 

 broken and fallen limbs, where vines, blackberry bushes, etc., have 

 grown up forming a tangle. The nests are placed 3 to 6 feet above 

 ground. The nests here are generally very poorly made affairs when 

 looked on from the outside. A nest I have in my collection, along 

 with four eggs, would have been overlooked completely, had we not seen 

 the bird carrying leaves to the nest. The nest is composed of, we 

 might say, a cluster of old leaves of oak, pecan, and maple, lined with 



