316 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



J. Stuart Rowley writes to me : "^Vhile walking through the woods 

 on San Bernardo Mountain, on the Gulf slope of the Sierra de la La- 

 guna, I heard the unmistakable song of a solitary vireo, and, by care- 

 fully tracing the song to its source, I finally discovered the bird sitting 

 on the nest." Charles E. Doe, who now has this nest in the Univer- 

 sity of Florida, tells me that it is a beautiful nest, made of fibers and 

 moss, and placed 12 feet from the ground in a small oak ; it was taken 

 on May 6, 1933. 



Eggs. — Both of the sets mentioned above, the only sets of which I 

 have any record, contained four eggs each. Mr. Brewster's eggs are 

 white, "with a slight creamy tint, and are spotted, chiefly about the 

 larger ends, with reddish brown and black." The measurements of the 

 eight eggs average 20.5 by 14.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four 

 extremes measure 21.1 by 13.8, 20.5 by 15.3, 19.9 by 14.3, and 20.2 by 

 13.8 millimeters. 



VIREO CALIDRIS BARBATULUS (Cabanis) 



BLACK-WHISKERED VIREO 



HABITS 



Our black-whiskered vireo is an offshoot from a "West Indian species, 

 Vireo calidris, of which there are at least three other subspecies found 

 in the Lesser Antilles and on islands in the Caribbean Sea. Our bird 

 differs from the type race, Vireo calidris calidris, "in much paler and 

 less buffy superciliary stripe and auricular region, grayer pileum, 

 duller olive-green of back, etc., and purer white throat and chest," 

 according to Ridgway (1904) . 



It is apparently only a summer resident west of Dominica, where it 

 breeds in Haiti, Cuba, Little Cayman, Isle of Pines, Key West, the 

 Dry Tortugas, the Bahama Islands, and on the west coast of Florida, 

 as far north as Anclote Keys. 



Arthur H. Howell (1932) records it, also, on Plantation Key, Key 

 Largo, and other Florida keys, as well as at Miami and at Coral Gables. 

 Although I have visited most of these Florida localities several times, 

 I never saw this bird, as I generally left for the north before its ar- 

 rival. Oscar Baynard told me that it is a common summer resident 

 in Pinellas County, nesting in the red mangroves around the shores 

 of the bays and bayous late in May and in June, and such seem to be 

 its favorite haunts all along the west coast of Florida, though Howell 

 (1932) collected one "from the top of a large oak in a creek bottom 

 at Seven Oaks, a mile or more from Old Tampa Bay." 



On the Isle of Pines, according to W. E. Clyde Todd (1916) , "it is a 

 common inhabitant of the low thickets and jungles. * * * j^ 

 was particularly numerous on the slopes and at the foot of the Casas 

 and Caballos Mountains." 



