168 MINOR oo 
enjoy the music of a rose-breasted grosbeak, — 
who at that time had never been a common 
bird with me, — while “‘a pesky Wagnerian 
red-eye kept up an incessant racket.” 
The warbling vireo is admirably named; 
there is no one of our birds that can more prop- 
erly be said to warble. He keeps further from 
the ground than the others, and shows a strong 
preference for the elms of village streets, out of 
which his delicious music drops upon the ears 
of all passers underneath. How many of them 
hear it and thank the singer is unhappily an- 
other question. 
The solitary vireo may once in a while be 
heard in a roadside tree, chanting as familiarly 
as any red-eye; but he is much less abundant 
than the latter, and, as a rule, more retiring. 
His ordinary song is like the red-eye’s and the 
yellow-throat’s, except that it is pitched some- 
what higher and has a peculiar inflection or ca- 
dence, which on sufficient acquaintance becomes 
quite unmistakable. This, however, is only the 
smallest part of his musical gift. One morning 
in May, while strolling through a piece of thick 
woods, I came upon a bird of this species, who, 
all alone like myself, was hopping from one low 
branch to another, and every now and then 
breaking out into a kind of soliloquizing song, 
—a musical chatter, shifting suddenly to an in- 
