DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 13 



then after a few more mutual mews the relieved bird would be 

 off to the oak-tops. Once the sitting bird, this time I suppose 

 the male, sang while brooding on the nest when the other re- 

 turned. 



Almost on the wood-edge as it was and not ten feet back from 

 a little opening off the road and scarcely over head-high, it was 

 easy to watch the nest. I could follow the bird's comings and 

 goings through the open wood without difficulty. I got to know 

 well some details of their living and something of their ways. 

 Since they took turns on the nest I had a chance to compare 

 their appearances, but with the exception that after two weeks' 

 sitting one seemed duller than the other I could not say which 

 was which nor could I tell which sat longer save that it seemed 

 that I found the duller one oftener on the nest. This one, 

 which, of course, I took to be the female, was much the tamer 

 of the two, so tame that gradually she came to eat hard-boiled 

 eggs and crumbed cracker from the finger of one of the ladies 

 from the nearby hotel.* Anyone could stand within six feet and 

 pick out her dainty coloring, which justified the name "Blue- 

 headed Vireo" much more than her ways did the name "Soli- 

 tary." I have chosen the name Solitary as more usual and 

 more euphonious, greatly regretting that so charming a bird is 

 unnamed in the vernacular. As she sat on the eggs her white 

 chin, projecting over the side of the nest, contrasted quite dis- 

 tinctly with her dark blue-gray head and green-grey back. The 

 white line over her eye and the two wing-bars of yellowish- 

 white could be easily distinguished. When she hopped off of 

 the nest you could see the yellow flush on her sides. In the 

 tree-tops she looked brownish-gray. 



She sat faithfully in all weathers. When the heat was so in- 

 tense that she panted even in the shade in which she had built, 

 and in steady downpours of rain, and on days of cold wind 

 when her cradle swung as if it would turn over, she was at her 

 post. After much devotion it was the hardest of fates that the 

 young should be destroyed. Just what destroyed them I never 

 could determine. It may have been deer-mice, of which there 



* Cf. E. R. Lyman, in Bird Lore, 1906, p. 123. 



