PHILADELPHIA VIREO. 



Family Virconidce. 



Philadelphia This is the smallest of our six Vireos. 

 One not acquainted with the eccentricities 

 of ornithology would naturally infer that a 

 L. 4.80 inches Philadelphia Vireo is, or ought to be, a corn- 

 May 1 8th mon bird in the vicinity of the ' ' city of broth- 

 erly love; "but that is not the case, the bird, on the contrary, 

 is rare indeed about Philadelphia and is distinctly boreal. 

 It happened that the first known specimen was captured 

 by a Mr. Cassin near this city in 1842, and was described 

 by him nine years later; as for the breeding place, nest, 

 and life habits, they were not discovered until 1884, 

 apparently in Canada!* Hence it would seem logically 

 proper that this species should have been named the Can- 

 ada Vireo. But of course, a lost, strayed, or stolen polar 

 bear discovered in Philadelphia is liable, in the other prem- 

 ise, to be named Ursa philadelphica! Farther south than 

 northern New England and New York this Vireo is a 

 rare migrant. Its colors are quite different from those of 

 the other species; upper parts light olive green, under parts 

 distinctly washed with sulphur yellow, the breast yellow- 

 est, crown gray, a whitish bar over the eye, a narrow, dark 

 bar through it, cheek grayish, no wing-bars. Nest, pensile, 

 woven with fine grasses, shreds of birch bark, etc., sus- 

 pended at the fork of a branch about seven to ten feet from 

 the ground. Egg, white sparingly flecked with umber 

 brown especially about the larger end . This species breeds 

 from Manitoba, Ontario, and Labrador south to New 

 Brunswick, Maine, northern New Hampshire (possibly 

 northern New York), and northern Michigan. It is com- 

 mon on the woodland roads and clearings of the Umbagog 

 region of Maine, and on those about Dixville Notch, less 

 common on those of the Franconia Notch, and it is prob- 

 ably a rare resident on those which flank the Presidential 

 Range of the White Mountains, New Hampshire, but 

 there is no record to prove this last. 



The song of the Philadelphia Vireo has been likened to 

 that of the Red-eye, but the resemblance is entirely super- 

 ficial. The isolated groups of notes, unlike those of the 

 *Vide. The Auk, Vol. II., p. 305. article by E. E. T. Seton. 

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