30 Bird Studies. 



tail are yellowish white, ^his feature is particularly characteristic of birds 

 taken in the fall. The iris is generally red with a carmine tinge, but some 

 individuals in spring and many in fall have brown eyes. The sexes are alike, 

 and the young are very similar to the old birds, but always have brown eyes. 



The nest is pensile or semi-pensile and is composed of grasses, strips of 

 plant fibre, and plant down. These materials are woven compactly and 

 smoothly, and the nest is lined with a finer coating of grasses and bark-fibres. 

 The upper edge of the nest, for about half its circumference, is attached to 

 a point where a small branch forks, generally toward the termination of a 

 limb. The height from the ground varies from five to forty feet, rarely 

 higher. Such nests are to be found in trees along busy streets of country 

 towns, about our houses and in the thicket and woodland. The eggs are 



RED-EYED VIREO. 



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white, with a slight freckling of black or brown dots on the larger end. They 

 are a little more than four fifths of an inch long, and nearly three fifths of an 

 inch in their other diameter. All through the long summer days, even in the 

 noon-day heat of July and August, the Red-eyed Vireo sings a slow, drowsy, 

 broken song. Hesitating as if at a loss for the next series of notes, the pause 

 is long, but they are sure to come. It seems as if he waited to hear some other 

 birds that have long since ceased to fill their part in the general chorus. 



The bird finds a winter home in Florida, and from there to Northern 

 South America. In summer it ranges throughout Eastern North America, 

 north to the Arctic Circle and west to British Columbia. It breeds in almost 

 its entire North American range. 



