A Vireo as Hostess 



By ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES, Meriden, New Hampshire 



Photographs by the Author 



Copyright by Ernest Harold Baynes 



IF ONE makes a practice of extending hospitality to the birds, by giving 

 them food and water and nesting-sites, and by protecting them from their 

 enemies, it is easy to have hosts of acquaintances among the feathered folk. 



For years it has been a very common thing for us to have birds of many 

 species come to our window-sills to be fed and to have several species alight 

 upon our hands and arms and even upon our hats and ears and lips. My wife 

 and I have sat in the snow with a hundred birds swarming over us and the 

 ground about us, some of them creeping inside our outer coats and into our 

 loose pockets in search of the food we carried for them. They even permitted 

 us to pick them up in our hands. But, after all, most of these we regarded more 

 as delightful acquaintances rather than intimate friends. 



Now and then, however, a bird will "take you into the family" so to speak. 

 When this happens make the most of it. It will be a delightful, perhaps won- 

 derful, experience, and probably you will never again have another exactly 

 like it even if you live to be very old. 



I had such an experience recently in my home village, Meriden, N. H. One 

 day, near the middle of last June, a lady visiting the Bird Sanctuary, called 

 my attention to the almost completed nest of a pair of Red-eyed Vireos in a 

 small maple tree not far from the main foot-path. A few days later when I 

 went to visit it I found it complete — the typical deep little basket made chiefly 

 of strips of bark and grasses, suspended from a forked twig about five feet from 

 the ground. Next day there was an egg in it, white, with black and reddish 

 brown spots. 



Two or three days later when I approached the nest the female was sitting 

 on it, while her mate in a nearby maple grove continually called attention to 

 his presence by short, precise, and quickly delivered sentences. 



I knew that Vireos have the reputation of being willing to meet one half 

 way in the matter of making friends, so I decided to make an advance. First 

 I went to a dry and sandy spot where I turned over large stones until I found 

 some ants' eggs. Then I selected a dead weed-stalk about five feet long and 

 impaled an ant's egg on the sharp end of it. With this I very quietly approached 

 the nest and held out my offering at arm's length, until the white morsel was 

 within reach of the Vireo. At first she looked alarmed, then astonished, and 

 a moment later rather bored, for she turned her head away and refused to 

 look at the proffered food. But I waited patiently, holding the tip of the weed- 

 stalk within easy reach. At last she turned her head as if the temptation to 

 do so could no longer be resisted. She now showed keen interest in the pro- 

 ceedings, took a sharp look at the white delicacy at the end of the stalk and 



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