238 Sketches of So7ne Common Birds. 



EED-EYED YIEEO. 



The fresh foliage of the maples, the unrolling and ex- 

 panding buds of the elms, and the evanescent blossoms of 

 the apple, cherry, and peach trees bring to us a host of 

 smaller birds which linger in southern latitudes until they 

 are assured of the immediate opening of the northern 

 warmer season. The vireos, the flycatchers, and the 

 warblers, in fact all the birds that are strictly insectivorous 

 and take their food from the blossoms and foliage of the 

 trees, defer their appearance until the food they desire has 

 become abundant. At the favorable time they come in 

 full song, and usually attired in their showy summer 

 plumage, they flit among the lately unfolded vegetation, 

 giving additional charm and animation to the growing 

 beauty of arboreal life. Prominent among them is the 

 red-eyed vireo, a most abundant resident of the orchard, 

 park, grove, highway trees, and woodlands. Ordinarily 

 it precedes the other vireos in its return to its summer 

 home, and taking up its vocation of singing and gleaning 

 noxious insects from the bark and foliage of the trees it 

 frequents, it is soon at home as in the preceding summer. 



Although the charming song of this little greenlet is 

 heard commonly issuing from the trees which shade the 

 sidewalks in villages and cities, and is also characteristic 

 of the orchard and garden trees, in this section it is 

 especially noticeable in the woodlands, where the emphatic 

 notes are heard at any time of the day in the vocal season. 

 This vireo is abundant in the elms and maples of the 

 highways, parks, and groves in the early days of the sea- 

 son, since the hardwood trees of the woodlands are slower 

 in donning their vernal robes, but in the mating and nest- 

 ing period the red-eyed vireo is a typical bird of the 

 woods. Though much has been written concerning the 

 red-eyed vireo, and though its songs are common both in 

 public and retired places, the author of the music is to the 

 mass of people known or\\j in a general and superficial way. 

 The red-eyed vireo has many interesting traits, however, 

 and the unreserved liberality with which it dispenses its 

 music through the summer, the confidence it manifests by 



