DELAWARE VALLEY OKNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 11 



over to the Catskills, that the Vireo's song won nie. It was 

 exciting to me to hear unexpectedly so heautiful a bird-song ; 

 it was doubly exciting in that it was the first time I had listened 

 to it ; it broke in on me with all the thrill ot a discovery, for I 

 had not read that the Solitary was so fine a singer. I had 

 stopped day after day, as I passed his home by the roadside, to 

 look at him and his mate busy about their nest. I had taken a 

 Cowbird's egg from it in the hope that, that danger removed, 

 they might rear their young, indiscreet though they had been in 

 trusting them to so low a limb in so exposed a place ; I had 

 even smoothed her dark head as she sat on the nest and 

 chucked her under her soft white chin, but no song had I heard 

 save the twuweet, tiouweet, tivieichuweet, turn, that jiroclaimed him 

 a Vireo from its likeness to the Redeye's song, but not that 

 bird but his fine self, through its greater keenness and fulness. 

 Then the day after the catastrophe, the day after we found the 

 parents in distress, and but one young in the nest, and it dead, 

 came the revelation. I was following the winding red road 

 through the low rock oaks of the mountain-top, conscious that 

 the Solitary Vireo was singing, but paying no special heed to 

 him, when all of a sudden there leaped up a jetting little song, 

 like the Catbird's in its ecstasy, but gentler and more caressing. 

 From such intricate sweet warbling it fell to livelv trilling, not 

 unlike the Yellowbird's prolonged trilling, to rise at the end to 

 another Catbird-like burst. I looked up and just above me was 

 the Solitary Vireo, revolving his head in that dizzying fashion so 

 characteristic of his kind, as he eyed about for prey. But the 

 madness of remating was upon him, and he soon fell to warb- 

 ling and trilling again, preceding each outburst with his usual 

 song. I had heard few birds with songs so long and so varied, 

 and put him down then and there as the best of his race, and 

 one of the very best of any race. 



Charming in his trustfulness and little ways, I had known 

 him before; and beautiful, as I had watched him as he sat on 

 the nest, relieving his mate, that you could scarcely distinguish 

 from him, for her ramble for food. But now he was revealed a 

 really great singer, of little volume though his finer notes. For 

 two weeks after this day, July 15th, you might hear this fine 



