62 TWENTIETH CEHTTUBY CLASSICS 



are not wild or timid, will no doubt soon become accus- 

 tomed to the presence of man, and readily make their 

 homes about our prairie dwellings, as soon as the trees 

 and shrubbery form inviting haunts ; at any rate, they are 

 much more common here than in former years. 



In flight they are less steady and not so swift as the 

 Red-eyed. Their food habits are the same, but they look 

 more for the supply among the foliage in the treetops. 

 Their song is not so constant, and is delivered in a slower 

 and more plaintive strain, but in a very clear and musi- 

 cal manner. Among the Vireos they rank next to the 

 Warbling in song. 



In regard to their nesting habits I will say, that on the 

 9th of May, 1877, I found, in the timber near Neosho 

 Falls, Kansas, a nest of this bird (a pendent one, as all 

 Vireos' nests are) attached to branches of a very small 

 horizontal limb of a large hickory tree, about twenty feet 

 from the ground, and ten feet below the limbs that formed 

 the top of the tree. In the forks of the tree the Cooper's 

 Hawks were nesting, and I discovered the Vireo and its 

 nest in watching the Hawks or rather the man I had 

 hired to climb the tree to the Hawks' nest. The little 

 bird at first flew off, but on his near approach returned 

 and suffered him to bend the limb toward the tree and 

 cover her with his hand on the nest. The twig was 

 quickly broken, and the bird and nest lowered by a line 

 in a small covered basket, taken to collect the eggs of the 

 Hawk. Such manifestations of courage and love, so rare 

 and exceptional, touched me to the heart, and it was hard 

 to make up my mind to rob and kill the bird and her 

 mate, scolding in the treetop. I can only offer in extenua- 



