PLUMBEOUS VIREO 309 



brown, sometimes almost reddish brown, with washed-oiit edges ; some 

 eggs are more heavily marked than those of the northern bird. The 

 measurements of 40 eggs average 19.7 by 14.5 millimeters; the eggs 

 showing the four extremes measure 21.6 by 14.3, 20.2 by 15.0, 18.4 by 

 14.0, and 21.3 by 12.4 millimeters. 



The food of this vireo is included under the report on the type race, 

 and the plumage changes, behavior, and voice are not materially dif- 

 ferent from those of the blue-headed vireo. Many observers have 

 praised the beautiful song of the mountain vireo, but most of them 

 have compared it with the songs of the redeye or white-eye, which are, 

 of course, inferior or at least less pleasing. But Mr. Brewster (1886) 

 says: "Its song was somewhat like that of solitarius, but to my ear 

 much finer, many of the notes being louder and sweeter, and the whole 

 performance more continuous and flowing." And Mr. Wayne (1910) 

 states : "The song of this form is much richer in tone and volume than 

 that of its near relative, the Blue-headed Vireo." 



A. L. Pickens thinks this vireo should have specific rating on the 

 merits of its voice, and says in a letter to me: "The mountain vireo 

 takes the standard vireo syllables, with all their distinctness, and adds 

 two syllables like an accompaniment blown on some woodland flute, 

 and the most matter-of-fact oratory of the vireos becomes something 

 worth climbing mountains and pushing through thickets to hear." 



VIREO SOLITARIUS PLUMBEUS Cones 



PLUMBEOUS VIREO 



HABITS 



According to the 1931 Check-list, this dull-colored vireo "breeds 

 from northern Nevada, northern Utah, southern Montana, north- 

 eastern Wyoming, and southwestern South Dakota south through 

 Arizona and central western Texas to Chihuahua and the mountains 

 of Vera Cruz." It is thus the easternmost of the western races, and 

 there seems to be no breeding race of the species in the center of the 

 United States, that is, the Mississippi Valley region. The species, as a 

 whole, seems to prefer cool, northern forests, mountain regions, or 

 the cooler climate of the Pacific, to the hot dry interior of the country. 



Ridgway (1904) describes the plumbeous vireo as "similar to L. s. 

 alticola^ but back and scapulars entirely gray ; rump and upper tail- 

 coverts gray, tinged with olive-green, and sides and flanks much more 

 faintly washed with yellow." The color pattern is the same as in the 

 mountain vireo, the head being practically concolor with the back, but 

 all the colors are much paler and grayer. 



The plumbeous vireo is essentially a bird of the mountains and the 

 momitain canyons, during the breeding season. In the Huachuca and 



