BOBOLINK 111 



pretty little gray basket, smoothly and firmly 

 woven of strips of bark, and hung in the fork of 

 a branch far out from the main body of the tree. 

 It is lined with finer vegetable fibres and plant- 

 down. Often the outside is fairly shingled over 

 with fragments torn from old hornets' nests, 

 and daubed with wads of spiders' silk. You 

 cannot mistake it for any other nest in the 

 woods. There are three or four white eggs, 

 speckled round the larger end. 



The Yellow-throated Vireo is a little larger, 

 and keeps more to the w^oods, rarely coming into 

 our dooryards as does the Preacher. He sings 

 much the same tune, but sings in a contralto 

 voice, and is less oratorical than Redeye's so- 

 prano delivery. 



The Mountain Solitary Vireo builds in the 

 Southern Alleghenies, and the White-eyed Vireo 

 sometimes winters in the Gulf States. 



BOBOLINK 



This singer of the open field is but a transient 

 visitor in the Middle South. His summer home 

 is from New Jersey and Kansas northward; 

 later in the season, wiien his gay nuptial plumage 

 has been molted, he fattens on Louisiana rice; 

 and drifts further south, even to Mexico and 

 South America, for the winter. But almost any 

 bird of Eastern North America may be a tran- 



