336 BULLETIN 19 7, ■m>riTED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Three years later, again in May, I caught another glimpse of vireo 

 courtship. A male, with feathers puffed out, perched in a low shrub, 

 was singing in characteristic phrases, but without tone quality, the 

 notes given softly in a whispered voice. He flew toward the other 

 bird, and they darted away together. 



Nesting. — The red-eyed vireo builds a dainty little pensile nest sus- 

 pended usually from a forking, horizontal branch of a shrub, or low 

 branch of a tree, rather below the level of our eyes as we walk through 

 second-growth. The nest is a beautifully finished piece of workman- 

 ship, constructed of fine grasses and rootlets, bits of birch bark, and 

 paper from wasps' nests, bound together and to the supporting 

 branches with spider's or caterpillar's webbing, and, perhaps the most 

 constant material, long, narrow, flexible strands of grapevine bark, 

 which help to hold up the cup of the nest. It may be ornamented 

 on the outside v/ith bits of lichen. Dr. Arthur A. Allen (1932) says 

 that it has thinner walls usually than other vireo's nests. 



F. N. Whitman (1924) found a nest only 2 feet from the ground, and 

 Charles R. Stockard (1905) speaks of one "situated sixty feet from the 

 ground in the topmost boughs of a gum tree." Five to ten feet eleva- 

 tion is the usual height. 



Minna Anthony Common (1934) gives this interesting account of 

 the building of a nest : 



July 6, 1933; Foiind : two pieces of tangled ravellings hanging from fork on 

 a beech branch four feet from the ground. It appears like the starting of a 

 nest. * * * 



July 8: We have decided it is a nest, for there are a few more ravellings 

 hanging down a foot or so. 



July 9, 1933 : Late afternoon : We saw both Red-eyed Vireos {Vireo olivaceus) 

 working at the nest. The bunches of untidy ravelling hang lower, but there is 

 no bottom to the nest. Birds are absolutely silent. 



July 10: Some loose network may be seen forming a bottom to the nest. 

 Several bits of birch bark have been skillfully intertwined on the outside. Both 

 birds work. The ravellings are mostly caught up. 



July 11, 6 a. m. : Saw one bird pull a small, short strand of bark from a dead 

 oak twig. He carried it to the nest and was back for another in four min- 

 utes. * * * At the end of the day the nest appeared finished. All loose 

 ravellings had been caught np and fastened. A piece of paper % by l^A inches in 

 size is spread across the floor of the nest inside. 



Francis Hobart Herrick (1935) describes in detail the construction 

 of a red-eyed vireo's nest which he watched from a distance of 10 feet. 

 The following is a condensed account of his report : 



With a vireo or an oriole and all such as build similarly suspended nests, 

 the work of construction must needs begin with securing the first fibers to two 

 or more twigs destined to support the future nest. Upon these primary strands 

 is built up a loose, free-hanging fibrous mass, the primary nest mass, and this is 

 graduUy extended downward while, pari passu, the attachment is carried out- 

 ward along each of the divergent twigs. A rim and bottom are gradully pro- 



