VIREONID.E — THE VIREOS. 375 



Dr. Cooper states that it reaches Puget Sound by the first of ^lay, and he 

 has also observed it in the Colorado Valley, after the 14th, where they made 

 themselves conspicuous l)y their song, but in a few days had all passed 

 northward. He has met them nesting in May at the eastern base of the 

 Coast Range, and has also found them quite common, in summer, on the 

 Columbia River. Their favorite resorts are the deciduous oaks. 



These birds were found breeding at Fort Tejon by Mr. Xantus, and at 

 Vancouver by Mr. Hepburn. 



Mr. Ridgway met with a few in September, in the thickets along the 

 streams flowing from the Clover Mountains. 



This species was taken in winter by Mr. Boucard, at Talew, in the State 

 of Oaxaca, Mexico. 



Mr. Audubon's statement that this bird is rather abundant, and that it 

 breeds in Louisiana, is undoubtedly incorrect, and his description of its nest 

 and eggs belongs rather to the Yellow-throated, and agrees with none that 

 I have ever seen of tliis species. That he found them abundant in Maine, 

 and traced them as far north as Pictou, Nova Scotia, is more probable. Dr. 

 Bachman speaks of this species becoming each year more abundant in South 

 Carolina, coming in February and remaining through March. 



Mr. Nuttall, who met with this species on the Columbia, about the begin- 

 ning of INIay, describes its song as a plaintive, deliberate warble, interme- 

 diate between the song of the olivaceus and the flavifrons. Mr. Burroughs 

 describes the love-notes of these birds as being inexpressibly sweet and ten- 

 der in both sexes. The song of the male, as I have heard it, bears no resem- 

 blance to that of any other Vireo. It is a prolonged and very peculiar ditty, 

 repeated at frequent intervals and always identical. It begins with a lively 

 and pleasant warble, of a gradually ascending scale, wdiich at a certain pitcli 

 suddenly breaks down into a falsetto note. The song then rises again in a 

 single high note, and ceases. For several summers the same bird has been 

 heard, near my house in Hingham, in a wild pasture, on the edge of a wood, 

 always singing the same singular refrain, during the month of June. 



Mr. Nuttall found a nest of this species suspended from the forked twig 

 of a wild crab-tree, about ten feet from the ground. The chief materials 

 were dead and withered grasses, with some cobwebs agglutinated together, 

 externally partially covered with a few shreds of hypnum, assimilating it 

 to the branch on which it hung, intermingled with a few white paper-like 

 capsules of the spiders' nests, and lined with a few blades of grass and 

 slender root-fibres. 



Seven nests of this species, found in Lynn and Hingham, Mass., exhibit 

 peculiarities of structure substantially identical. In comparison with the 

 nests of other Vireos, they are all loosely constructed, and seem to be not so 

 securely fastened to the twigs, from whicli they are suspended. One of these 

 nests, typical of the general character, obtained in Lynn, May 27, 1859, by 

 Mr. George 0. Welch, was suspended from the branches of a young oak, 



