Plate LXI. ' 



Fig. 7. LANIVIREO FLAVIFRONS-Yellowthroated Vireo. 



The Yellow-throated Vireo arrives and departs about the same time as the other species of its family. 

 It builds its nest in the latter part of May or first of June, and not infrequently in July it builds a 

 second time. 



LOCALITY: 



An orchard or shade tree in a lawn, either in the country or in town, is often chosen for the site of 

 the nest; but more commonly a forest tree in large woods is preferred. 



POSITION : 



The nest is pensile, and is generally placed at the bifurcation of a small horizontal branch, or in 

 the angle where a small twig shoots from a horizontal branch. Its height from the ground is from five 

 to twenty feet. 



. 

 MATERIALS: 



A nest before me is composed externally of pieces of hornets' nest, vegetable down, lichens, strips 

 of the inner bark of some weed, web from the common plant louse which infests the maple trees, and 

 spicier-web felted together in a promiscuous but firm manner. In several places of small dimensions the 

 lichens cover the exterior. Within this purse-shaped cavity is a thick layer of bleached blades of blue- 

 grass. The nest is firmly attached to its two supporting twigs by its external layer, which is wrapped 

 around and bound fast to the branches with web. Its diameter is 3J inches; depth, 2\ inches; diameter 

 of cavity is 1^ inches; depth of cavity, If inches. Dr. Brewer, writing of this nest, says, page 380, Vol. 

 I, " North American Birds: " " Their nests, built usually in low and rather conspicuous positions for birds 

 of this kind, occur most frequently in gardens and orchards. One of these, found suspended from a moss- 

 covered branch of an apple-tree in Roxbury, may be taken as typical of its kind. Its rim was firmly 

 bound around the fork of a branch by a continuation of the materials that form the outside of the nest 

 itself. These are an interweaving of spiders' webs, and silky threads from insect cocoons, largely inter- 

 mingled with mosses and lichens, and thus made to conform closely in appearance to the moss-grown 

 bark of the tree. The under portion of the nest is strengthened by long strips of the inner bark of the 

 wild grape. Within is an inner nest made of fine grassy stems and bark. It forms exactly a half sphere 

 in shape, is symmetrical, and is very thoroughly made. Its diameter is four, and its height two and one- 

 fourth inches. 



"Mr. Nuttall describes a nest of this kind, found by him suspended from the forked twig of 

 an oak, near a dwelling-house, as coated over with green lichens, attached very artfully by a slender 

 string of caterpillars' silk, the whole afterwards tied over by almost invisible threads of the same, so 



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