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THE SOLITARY FLY-CATCHER, OR VIREO. 



ViREO SOLITARIUS, ViEILL. 

 PLATE XXVIII. Male and Female. 



This, reader, is one of the scarce birds that visit the United States from 

 the south, and I have much pleasure in being able to give you an account 

 of it, as hitherto little or nothing has been known of its history. 



It is an inhabitant of Louisiana during the spring and summer months, 

 when it resorts to the thick cane-brakes of the alluvial lands near the 

 Mississippi, and the borders of the numberless swamps that lie in a di- 

 rection parallel to that river. It is many years since I discovered it, but 

 as I am not at all anxious respecting priority of names, I shall not insist 

 upon this circumstance. In the month of May 1809, 1 killed a male and 

 a female of this species, near the mouth of the Ohio, while on a shooting 

 expedition after young swans. The following spring, I killed a female 

 near Henderson in Kentucky. In 1821, I again procured a pair, with 

 their nest and eggs, near the mouth of Bayou La Fourche, on the Mis- 

 sissippi, and since that period have killed eight or ten pairs. 



The nest is prettily constructed, and fixed in a partially pensile man- 

 ner between two twigs of a low bush, on a branch running horizontally 

 from the main stem. It is formed externally of grey lichens, slightly put 

 together, and lined with hair, chiefly from the deer and raccoon. The 

 female lays four or five eggs, which are white, with a strong tinge of 

 flesh-colour, and sprinkled with brownish-red dots at the larger end. I 

 am inchned to believe that the bird raises only one brood in a season. 



The manners of this bird are not those of the Titmouse, Fly-catcher, 

 or Warbler, but partake of those of all three. It has the want of shyness 

 exhibited in the Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Fly-catchers. It hangs 

 to bunches of small berries, feeding upon them as a Titmouse does on 

 buds of trees ; and again searches amongst the leaves and along the twigs 

 of low bushes, like most of the Warblers. On the other hand, it differs 

 from all these in their principal habits. Thus, it never snaps at insects 

 on the wing, although it pursues them ; it never attacks small birds and 

 kills them by breaking in their skulls, as the Titmouse does ; nor does it 



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