292 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the female was in the lead, but the male was not far behind her, dis- 

 playing his charms. He sang his loud, rich, two-note song, so much 

 like the song of the yellow-throated vireo in tone, at regular intervals. 

 But he varied it occasionally, especially when near his mate, with a 

 series of sweet, warbling notes in a subdued tone, cher wee^ sweech, 

 sweech, sweech, to which she generally replied in a similar strain, as 

 they came together for an interchange of caresses. Near there I found 

 their new nest. 



Nesting. — All the nests of the blue-headed vireo, at least a dozen, 

 that my companions and I have found in eastern Massachusetts have 

 been in, or on the borders of, white-pine woods, seldom in clear, thick 

 stands of Pinus strohus., but more often in mixed woods of pines, 

 hemlocks, oaks, and other deciduous trees where the pines or hemlocks 

 predominated. I find only two exceptions to this rule in the literature. 

 C. W. and J. H. Bowles ( 1892) , of Ponkapog, Mass., report a nest that 

 "was about eight feet from the ground on the lowest branch of a 

 thirty- foot live oak. This was in a grove of other oaks of the same 

 size. This, we think, is an exceptional case, as all our other nests were 

 built in coniferous trees." And Dr. T. M. Brewer (Baird, Brewer, 

 and Kidgway, 1874) says : "In the summer of 1870 a pair built their 

 nest in a dwarf pear-tree, within a few rods of my house." 



F. H. Kennard reports, in his field notes, a nest 12 feet from the 

 ground in a small pine, and Owen Durfee's notes record a nest that 

 was 26 feet up and 10 feet out from the trunk of a large pine. He and 

 I once found a nest, 514 feet from the ground, in a white-cedar sapling 

 under a large hemlock in swampy mixed woods. Mr. Kennard's notes 

 mention one that was only 4 feet up in a small hemlock under some 

 large pines. All our other local nests were in saplings of deciduous 

 trees, mostly oaks, but also gray birch, beech, hickory, and walnut. 

 The lowest was 3I/2 feet up in an oak sapling and the highest 20 feet 

 in a slender oak. 



Farther north the nests are generally built in coniferous trees, 

 Mr. Kennard's notes mention a nest at Averill, Vt., that was about 

 6 feet up in a slim spruce on the bank between a trail and a stream, 

 and one at Duck Lake, Maine, in a spruce. Eobie W. Tufts writes to 

 me from Nova Scotia: "With but one exception, all nests of this 

 species have been found in coniferous trees of various kinds. The 

 single exception was a nest found in a wild apple tree. Conifers were 

 close by." 



Dr. Wing (1939) writes: "June 26, 1932, 1 found a nest under con- 

 struction at the Lake Superior State Forest, twenty -six miles north- 

 west of Newberry, Michigan. The birds had chosen a thirty-five-foot 

 Jack Pine tree for attaching the pensile nest, which was in the fork 

 of a horizontal branch twenty feet from the ground and three feet 

 from the trunk of the tree. Lichens and shreds of birch bark com- 



