44 BIRDS OF THE GARDEN AND ORCHARD. 



characters of more than one out of three of the songsters ; 

 and as I have since studied the markings of birds only 

 by viewing them from the ground as they were perched 

 upon bush or tree, and have never killed or dissected 

 one for this purpose, I cannot describe all the specific 

 or generic characters of our birds. I am well acquainted 

 with two of our Vireos ; but I cannot distinguish them 

 from each other except by their notes, which are as 

 familiar to me as the voice of the Eobin. I have, there- 

 fore, determined to name them according to the style of 

 their songs, leaving it to others to identify the species to 

 which they respectively belong. 



The Brigadier, which is the one, I think, described by 

 Nuttall as the Warbling Vireo, is a little olive-colored 

 bird, that occupies the lofty tree-tops while singing and 

 hunting his food, and is almost invisible as he is flitting 

 among the branches, and never still. The Preacher (Red- 

 eyed Vireo) arrives about a week or ten days earlier than 

 the Brigadier, and is later in his departure. The two are 

 very similar, both in their looks and their habits, frequent- 

 ing the trees in the town and its suburbs in preference to 

 the woods, singing at all hours of the day, particularly at 

 noon, and taking their insect prey from the leaves and 

 branches of the trees, or seizing it as it flits by their 

 perch, and amusing themselves while thus employed with 

 their oft-repeated notes. Each species builds a pensile 

 nest, or places it in a fork of the slender branches of a 

 tree. I have seen a nest of the Brigadier about ten feet 

 from the ground on a branch of a pear-tree, so near my 

 chamber-window that I might have reached it without 

 difficulty. The usual habit of either species is to sus- 

 pend its nest at a very considerable height from the 

 ground. 



