A Study of the Solitary Vireo 



BY CORNELIUS WEYGANDT 



The song of the Solitary Vireo brings home to me the realiza- 

 tion that there are birds' songs as distinctively minor as minor 

 poets. Beautiful and mad and memorable as it is, the .Solitary's 

 song is as surely minor, compared with the Wood Thrush's, as 

 Herrick is minor compared with Milton. It is no belittlement 

 of Herrick to call him a minor poet, and in calling the Solitary 

 Vireo a minor singer I intend all praise. I would place him 

 first of all minor singers as artist, although quality of voice and 

 long love make me hold more precious the Field Sparrow's 

 song, as surely a minor bird-song as is the Solitary's, or the 

 Southern Water Thrush's, another bird that, like my Vireo, 

 the books have failed to praise sufficiently. My purpose is to 

 praise the Solitary Vireo, but inasmuch as I would praise him 

 only to his honor, I want at once to confess that his song must 

 not be contrasted with the songs all of us will own as major, 

 the songs of the Bobolink, Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Mocking- 

 bird, Veery, Hermit Thrush, and Wood Thrush. I would con- 

 fess as frankly that the Solitary Vireo's song would suffer, heard 

 side by side with the Orchard Oriole's, the Winter Wren's, the 

 Fox Sparrow's, far greater as an artist as the Vireo is than these 

 last-named three. For associations' sake I hold dearer the 

 Redwing's fluted "okalee," the Whitethroat's "far lonely 

 silver strain," the House Wren's homey prattle, the Bluebird's 

 soft warble with all the spring in it, and the purity of a child's 

 heart. But what a fine fellow the Solitary is ! Like so many 

 woodlanders, he is sober enough in his dress and gentle enough 

 in his ways; but he is every feather of his five and a half inches 

 the artist, a madcap singer, a gloater in the drijijiing sweetness 

 of his bridal-song. 



It was in northeastern Pennsylvania, where the Poconos look 



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