72 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



Some years ago I suggested that the wrens had a 

 limited profane vocabulary of their own, reaching this 

 conclusion after watching a Carolina undergo some 

 mishaps. This may all be a wild fancy, but there are 

 very few birds but have expressions of anger, utter- 

 ances indicative of disgust and allied emotions, and 

 all this is but one remove from poor weak humanity. 



The Warbling Vireo brings us back to town, but it 

 must not be supposed that this bird has no other home 

 than in the trees of our village streets. You can find 

 them along many a country road that has, as it should 

 have, a fair complement of way-side trees. You can 

 find them, too, in the yards of our farm-houses, and 

 certainly wherever there is a fine old buttonwood, 

 planted in the days of our great-great-grandfathers. 

 About such a tree the warbling vireo can spend its 

 whole seven months' sojourn and have no occasion 

 to leave it There is, not far from Philadelphia, a 

 buttonwood so large thirteen feet in diameter that 

 a pair of these birds would require all summer to go 

 over every twig, and two pairs might be living in its 

 branches and not necessarily meet 



The warbling vireo comes to us in early spring 

 without any flourish of trumpets. It has been before, 

 and knows every nook and corner of our leafy ways. 

 There is not a branch of any village maple, no droop- 

 ing limb of any church-yard elm, no clustered trees 

 upon the common, or stately rows of pines about our 

 houses, but the warbler knows full well ; and at home 

 the moment he reaches us, he goes forthwith upon 

 his musical rounds, and, gentle as a spirit though he 

 seems, dealing death to the insect hordes that Nature 



