Green, Greenish Gray, Olive, and Yellowish Olive Birds 



"You see it — you know it — do you hear me? Do you be- 

 lieve it ? " is Wilson Flagg's famous interpretation of the song of 

 this commonest of all the vireos, that you cannot mistake with 

 such a key. He calls the bird the preacher from its declamatory 

 style: an up-and-down warble delivered with a rising inflection 

 at the close and followed by an impressive silence, as if the little 

 green orator were saying, " I pause for a reply." 



Notwithstanding its quiet coloring, that so closely resembles 

 the leaves it hunts among, this vireo is rather more noticeable 

 than its relatives because of its slaty cap and the black-and-white 

 lines over its ruby eye, that, in addition to the song, are its marked 

 characteristics. 



Whether she is excessively stupid or excessively kind, the 

 mother-vireo has certainly won for herself no end of ridicule by 

 allowing the cowbird to deposit a stray egg in the exquisitely 

 made, pensile nest, where her own tiny white eggs are lying; 

 and though the young cowbird crowd and worry her little fledg- 

 lings and eat their dinner as fast as she can bring it in, no dis- 

 pleasure or grudging is shown towards the dusky intruder that 

 is sure to upset the rightful heirs out of the nest before they are 

 able to fly. 



In the heat of a midsummer noon, when nearly every other 

 bird's voice is hushed, and only the locust seems to rejoice in 

 the fierce sunshine, the little red-eyed vireo goes persistently 

 about its business of gathering insects from the leaves, not flit- 

 ting nervously about like a warbler, or taking its food on the 

 wing like a flycatcher, but patiently and industriously dining 

 where it can, and singing as it goes. 



When a worm is caught it is first shaken against a branch to 

 kill it before it is swallowed. Vireos haunt shrubbery and- trees 

 with heavy foliage, all their hunting, singing, resting, and home- 

 building being done among the leaves — never on the ground. 



White-eyed Vireo 



(yireo novehoracensis) Vireo or Greenlet family 



Length — 5 to 5.3 inches. An inch shorter than the English 



sparrow. 

 Male and Female — Upper parts bright olive-green, washed with 



grayish. Throat and underneath white; the breast and 



177 



