368 NOTES ON THE 



distinctive habits in their summer abiding places. They are 

 said to be exceedingly solitary and retiring, building an 

 elegant, pensile nest hung about seven feet from the ground. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Spurious primary very small, not one-fourth the second, 

 which is longer than the sixth. Top and sides of the head and 

 upper part of the neck dark bluish ash; rest of upper parts 

 clear olive green. A white ring around the eye, interrupted 

 in the interior canthus by a dusky lore, but the white color 

 extending above this spot to the base of the bill. Under parts 

 white, the sides under the wings greenish yellow. Two bands 

 on the wing coverts, with the edges of the secondaries, green 

 ish white. Outer tail feather with its edge all round, including 

 the whole outer web, whitish. 



Length, 5.50; wing, 2.40. 



Habitat, eastern United States to the Plains. In winter, 

 south to Mexico and Guatemala. 



VIREO NOVEBORACENSIS (Gmelin). (631.) 

 WHITE-EYED VIREO. 



Not an abundant species, arrives about the 25th of April 

 and remains until about the first of October. It is not often 

 seen, and only in low brush, along the borders of swamps, 

 where it builds its nest in June, of much the same material as 

 the other Vireos employ, hung by the edge to the forks of the 

 limb of a bush not far above the ground. The eggs are indis- 

 tinguishable from those of the Red-eyed Vireo, and are four or 

 five in number. The note has been fairly spelled into "-chip 

 che'weeo, chip, chip, che'weeo''' so far as my own observation has 

 extended, but others have given startling descriptions of its 

 powers of song in other provinces which I have utterly failed 

 to obtain in this. Mr. Burroughs endows him with habits of 

 imitation only second to the Mocking Bird, and a "rari avis" 

 indeed on general considerations. It certainly has not been 

 my fortune to witness such exhibitions of his "unique tones." 

 While rejecting the more enthusiastic claims for the melody of 

 its song, Langille is quite as emphatic over the variety and 

 says in his "Birds in their Haunts," pp. 254-56: "feutin July or 

 August if you are on good terms with the sylvan deities, you may 

 listen to a far more rare and artistic performance. Your first im- 

 pression will be that that cluster of azaleas, or that clump of 

 swamp huckleberry, conceals three or four different songsters, 

 each vying with the others to lead the chorus. Such a medley of 

 notes, snatched from half the songsters of the field and forest, 



