Plate XXIII. 



Fig. 2. VIREO OLIVACEUS-Red-eyed Vireo. 



The Red-eyed Vireo is the most abundant summer-resident of its genus. The time of arrival and 

 departure is about the same as that of the preceding species. Nidification begins the first or second 

 week in May. But one brood is generally reared in a season. 



LOCALITY: 



In the country, the nest is usually built in a tree or sapling, rarely in a bush, about the edge of a 

 Avoods with thick underbrush ; but sometimes it is placed in a much less sequestered locality, such as a 

 tree among the shrubbery that lines the bank of a ditch, creek, canal, pond, levee, road, fence-row, or a 

 similar place. JNTear farm-houses, as in towns, the shade and fruit-trees furnish the favorite sites. 



POSITION' : 



The nest is pensile, and is supported like that of the Warbling Vireo. It is generally near the 

 extremity of a limb, and is distant from the ground from three to fifteen feet. The ordinary distance is 

 about six feet. Dr. Brewer states that it is sometimes fifty feet high. 



MATERIALS : 



Four nests, representing the usual materials of construction, are composed as follows : 



No. 1. Collected June 21, 1880; contained four young birds large enough to fly; situated five feet 

 from the ground in a horizontal fork of a young sassafras tree, at the edge of an oak woods. Internal 

 diameter, two inches; internal depth, one and three-eighths; external diameter, two and three-fourths; 

 external depth, tw^o and three-eighths inches. Externally there is nothing to be seen but large pieces 

 of hornet's nest, with here and there a fibrous band and bits of yellowish silk holding them loosely 

 together. Upon one side is a large bulge formed of hornet's nest. It is bound to its supports with 

 vegetable fibres and yelknv silk. Within this basket is a superstructure composed of pieces of reddish- 

 brown bark, probably the inner bark of the grape-vine, from a sixteenth to a quarter of an inch w^ide. 

 The lining is composed of shreds of the same bark, from three to eight inches long, loosely arranged. 



No. 2. Collected May 20, 1878 ; contained two fresh eggs ; situated six feet from the ground in a 

 black-oak tree, near the edge of an oak woods. Internal diameter, two; internal depth, one and three- 

 fourths; external diameter, three; external depth, two and one-eighth inches. The basket is composed 

 externally of wide blades of grass, strips of inner bark of trees, and pieces of hornet's nest, bound together 

 and to the supports by wdiite threads of silk. The superstructure and lining are similar to No. 1. 



No. 3. Collected May 21, 1878; contained five fresh eggs; situated three feet from the ground in 

 a horizontal fork of an elder bush, on the bank of a levee. Internal diameter, two and one-eighth; 

 internal depth, one and three-fourths; external diameter, two and three-fourths; external depth, two and 

 one-half inches. Externally the basket is covered so thickly with rolls of white silk that it is only here 



95 



