298 YELLOW-THROATED VIREO. 
Mourning Doves, Cedarbirds, Least Flycatchers, and especially the Yellow-throated 
Vireos selected the large and spreading apple trees for their nesting-sites. Of all the 
Vireos the Yellow-throated was the most familiar and beautiful. Its fine and peculiar 
song, commencing always with a very clear and mellow geery, geery, could be heard 
from the warmer days of May through June and the early part of July. Later, when 
the young became independent of parental care, all seemed to retreat to the woods. 
Often I watched them there in the latter part of July, in August, and early in Sep- 
tember and heard snatches of their song. This song is one of the most beautiful and 
characteristic of our woods, orchards, and ornamental groves. It is exceedingly liquid, 
mellow and sweet, quite different from the loud strains of the Red-eye and the pro- 
longed and somewhat tender song of the Warbling Vireo. The notes are clear, full 
of variety and charm, and are much admired by all who appreciate woodland melody 
of the sweetest type. If some enemy should happen to approach their nest, the birds 
utter notes full of anxiety and sadness. Their common call-note is a soft and mellow 
wee, wee. . 
The elegant nest I have often discovered at the extremity of some horizontal 
branch of an apple tree, usually not more than three to seven feet from the ground. 
The beautiful yellow breast always distinguishes the bird from other species. In the 
forest the structure is from ten to fifteen and even twenty-five feet from the ground. 
It is often conspicuously built in the extremity of a drooping branch. In the timbered 
lands near St. Louis and in south-western Missouri, where the bird always frequénts the 
bottom woods near the banks of streams and creeks, it appears to be partial to oak 
groups, and the nest is usually placed in the horizontal branch of an oak. Our plate 
(XVI) gives a correct idea of .this Vireo’s nest, exhibiting a copy of an exquisite 
water-color painting by Prof. R. Ridgway, the celebrated ornithologist of the Smith- 
sonian Institution and National Museum of Washington, D.C. Mr. Ridgway’s bird 
portraits prove that he is not only an eminent artist, but also a friend of nature, a man 
of feeling and poetry. His bird portraits are far more natural and attractive than all 
others ever published. The picture of the Yellow-throated Vireo with its nest is perfection 
itself, and makes a description of the structure almost unnecessary.— The nest is very 
beautiful, strong, and durable. It is basket-like, composed chiefly of strips of fine bark, 
some flax-like fibres, mixed profusely with spider’s webs, silky threads from insect 
cocoons, and skeletons of dry leaves. The outer surface is beautifully adorned with 
mosses and lichens, and sometimes with a few spider nests. The lining of the cavity 
consists of fine shreds of grape-vine and iron-wood bark, and sometimes of fine grasses. 
It requires about five to six days before the nest is finished. The birds work only in the 
early morning hours and sometimes also late in the afternoon. The mosses and lichens 
are fastened to the outside by the male while the female is breeding. 
Mr. Nuttall describes a nest of this Vireo, found by him hanging in a forked twig 
of an oak, near a dwelling. It was coated over with green lichens, attached very art- 
fully by a slender string of cater-pillars’ silk, the whole afterwards tied over by almost 
invisible threads of the same, so nicely done as to appear to be glued on. The whole 
fabric was thus made to resemble a natural knot of the tree, grown over with 
moss. Another nest found by Nuttall, was fixed on the depending branches of a 
