238 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



"Found to be common on most of the keys from Key Largo to Key 

 West. On some of them it is about the only land bird in evidence, 

 except doves and mockingbirds, for hours on end. Its note is almost 

 constant, and the song is heard in any of the winter months. Heard 

 one on Lower Matecumbe, March 3, 1932, which was singing as 

 enthusiastically as though nesting. Frequents the red mangrove 

 {Rhizifhora mangle^ and occurs on the smaller keys of Florida Bay, 

 notably Bottlepoint, Low, Manatee, and the Tern Keys. Found 

 rather sparingly about Cape Sable, in my experience, though at East 

 Cape Canal at times they are to be noted by reason of the call notes 

 and song. Here, as in the keys, it is partial to the red mangrove. Of 

 course, on some keys there is no other growth. Have not observed 

 it north of Little Shark River above Whitewater Bay, though it may 

 stray up the west coast for some distance. Very tame as a rule, not 

 noticing an observer only a few feet away. I could notice no marked 

 variation from habits of F. griseus, indeed it seemed almost identical 

 in every way, except at times the larger bill was apparent. Heard 

 and seen casually, it was a white-eyed vireo and no more." 



Nesting. — While walking through a hammock, 3 miles west of Fla- 

 mingo, near the southern tij) of Florida, with Guy Bradley, the war- 

 den who later gave his life in the cause of bird protection, I un- 

 expectedly came upon a nest of this vireo on April 28, 1903. It hung 

 directly in our path, suspended 3 feet above the ground from the 

 slanting twigs of a "salt bush" that overhung the narrow path; this 

 is a peculiar, slender, thorny shrub, which Guy said has red berries 

 on it in the fall. The nest was beautifully made of strips of inner 

 bark, soft vegetable fibers, skeletons of leaves, plant down, mosses, 

 lichens, spiders' nests, etc., and was lined with fine grasses and Vsnea 

 lichen. It held three eggs well advanced in incubation. I shot the 

 parent bird and later identified it as this subspecies. 



Holt and Sutton (1926) say: "Mr. Semple has sent the Carnegie 

 Museum a beautiful nest with two eggs which he found, April 23, 

 twenty-five miles south of Cocoiuit Grove. He closely observed the 

 parents many times, and waited several days to make sure that two 

 eggs constituted the complete set. The nest is two inches deep and 

 about three inches in diameter outside, and one and one-half by two 

 and one-half inches inside. It is thinly but securely bound by 

 spider-webs and lined entirely with fijie shreds of palm-fiber, and 

 was placed at the tip of a branch of a large bayberry bush." 



There is a nest and four eggs of the Key West vireo in the Thayer 

 collection in Cambridge, taken at Key West on May 29, 1890. It was 

 suspended from the fork of a small twig on a "low, bushy tree"; it 

 is a bulky nest and deeply hollowed, measuring three inches in diameter 

 by three inches in depth outside; the inner diameter at the top is 

 only one and one-half inches, but the top is much overhung, so that 



