The Red-eyed Vireo 267 



youth and the song of the Vireo have been going on together now for some 

 weeks, and the authors of all the din apparently have never noticed each other. 



The past four years a pair of Vireos has spent the summer in the trees of 

 this vacant lot. One June day I found the nest near the outer end of a white 

 birch limb. The nest could easily be reached by a grown person standing on 

 the ground beneath. It was a beautiful cradle, hung in the fork of two twigs, 

 and was made mainly of strips of bark, dried grasses, and plant fiber. A piece 

 of white string and some scraps of paper decorated the outer sides. It contained 

 four white eggs, lightly spotted around the larger end. From these there 

 emerged in time four little birds that for many days engrossed their mother's 

 attention. After they had flown away I took the nest and placed it on the wall 

 of my study. The next spring, while passing near the place with a little friend 

 of mine, I went over to the limb and showed her the place from which I had 

 cut the twig to take the nest. Just as I took it in my fingers I was surprised 

 and delighted to find a new Vireo nest not more than 12 inches from where the 

 other had been, and in it sat a parent bird, its red eyes plainly visible. In 

 due time this nest also was removed to the study. 



The past year I could not find the nest, although the birds were about and 

 the male was heard singing every day. When autumn came, however, and the 

 leaves had fallen, the nest was discovered in another tree a few yards away at 

 a height of at least 20 feet from the ground. Only yesterday I learned that for 

 the fourth time a Vireo's nest has been found in the vacant lot. One of the 

 boys discovered it suspended from a swinging limb just over a path along which 

 commuters hurry every morning for trains. So I went out to look, and found 

 that it held one vigorous young bird that cried most outrageously when I 

 pulled the limb down a few inches in order to remove a dead one whose head 

 hung over the edge. 



One of the questions which naturally arises in connection with this record 

 of nests is whether they were all built by the same pair of birds. It would seem 

 that such was probably the case, although there is no possible way of knowing. 



In a few weeks now the Vireos will be gone and for more than eight months 

 we shall hear no more of them. Traveling southward, chiefly by night, stopping 

 to rest in groves, orchards, and forests as they proceed, the Vireos journey on, 

 some of them passing downward through western Texas and Mexico to the far- 

 away tropics. Others reach the Gulf of Mexico along the coast of Louisiana, 

 Mississippi, or western Florida, and there, after a brief pause, plunge out 

 across the tumbling waters of the sea and never sight land again for six to eight 

 hundred miles until they reach Yucatan or Central America. Through the 

 interminable jungles of South America they continue their journey until they 

 reach the regions of the eciuator, many going on southward into southern Hni/.il. 



Here, in the great steaming forests, they remain for some months until the 

 instinct of migration again begins to beat in their veins. Then our little friends 

 turn northward, and those that ha\e surxixed in due time gain the boundaries 



