300 BLUE-HEADED VIREO, 
densely covered with foliage. It is more compactly built than other Vireos’ nests; it 
has thicker walls, and the materials, consisting chiefly of asclepias and other flax-like 
fibres, are softer. All the nests I have found were only sparingly decorated with spider’s 
nests.on the outside. Mr. John Burroughs, whose excellent books on subjects of natural 
history ought to be in every family and school library, describes the love notes of these 
birds as being inexpressibly sweet and tender in both sexes. According to Dr. T. M. 
Brewer, the.song of the male bears no resemblance to that of any other Vireo. It is a 
prolonged and very peculiar ditty, repeated at frequent intervals and always identical. 
It begins with a lively and pleasant warble, of a gradually ascending scale, which at 
a certain pitch suddenly breaks down into a falsetto note. The song then rises again 
in a single high note, and ceases. ‘For several summers,” Dr. Brewer concludes, “the 
same bird has been heard, near my house in Hingham, in a wild pasture, on the edge 
of a wood, always singing the same singular refrain, during the month of June.” 
Of a nest found by Mr. Geo. O. Welch at Lynn, Mass., Dr. Brewer gives a more 
detailed description. It was ‘“‘suspended from the branches of a young oak, about twelve 
feet from the ground. The external depth of this nest was only 2.50 inches, the dia- 
meter 3.25, and its cavity 1.75 inches deep, and 2.00 inches wide at the rim. It was 
constructed externally of strips of yellow and gray birch bark, intermingled with bits 
of wool and dry grasses. The external portion was quite loosely put together, but was 
lined, in a more compact manner, with dry leaves of the white pine, arranged in layers. 
Another nest, found at Hingham, was but two feet from the ground, on a branch of 
a hickory sapling. In its general structure it was the same, not differing in shape, 
being made to conform to its position, and being twice as long as it was broad. It 
contained four young, when found, about the 10th of June. One nest alone, built on a 
bush in Lynn, exhibits even an average degree of compactness in its external structure. 
This is largely composed of cocoons, which are woven together with a somewhat homo- 
geneous and cloth-like substance. Within, decayed stems of grasses take the place of 
the usual pine needles.—In the summer of 1870 a pair built their nest in a dwarf pear 
tree, within a few rods of my house. They were at first very shy and would not permit 
themselves to be seen at their work, and suspended all labor when any one was occupied 
near their chosen tree. Soon after the construction of the nest two Cowbird’s eggs 
were deposited, which I removed, although the female only laid two of her own before 
she began to sit upon them. By this time she became more familiar, and would not 
leave her nest unless I attempted to lay hands upon her. She made no complaints in 
the manner of the White-eyed, nor sought to attack like the Yellow-throated, but kept 
within a few feet, and watched me with eager eyes, until I left her. Unfortunately, her 
nest was pillaged by a Black-billed Cuckoo, and I was unable to observe her feed the 
young, as I had hoped to do.”’ 
The eggs, four, rarely five in number, have a white ground and are spotted pretty 
uniformly over the entire surface with dark and reddish-brown dots. 
NAMES: BLUE-HEADED VirEO, Solitary Vireo, Solitary Greenlet.— Einsiedlervirea (German), 
SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Muscicapa solitaria Wils. (1810). VIREO SOLITARIUS Vimiuu. (1819). 
Lanivireg 
solitarius Brd. (1858). 
