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THE SOLITARY VIREO, OR GREENLET. 



4- Vireo solitarius, Vieill. 

 PLATE CCXXXIX.— Male and Female. 



This, reader, is one of the scarce birds that visit the United States from 

 the south, and I have much pleasure in being able to give you an account of 

 it, as hitherto little or nothing has been known of its history. 



It is an inhabitant of Louisiana during the spring and summer months, 

 when it resorts to the thick cane-brakes of the alluvial lands near the Mis- 

 sissippi, and the borders of the numberless swamps that lie in a direction 

 parallel to that river. It is many years since I discovered it, but as I am 

 not at all anxious respecting priority of names, I shall not insist upon this 

 circumstance. In the month of May 1809, I killed a male and a female of 

 this species, near the mouth of the Ohio, while on a shooting expedition 

 after young Swans. The following spring, I killed a female near Henderson 

 in Kentucky. In 1821, I again procured a pair, with their nest and eggs, 

 near the mouth of Bayou La Fourche, on the Mississippi, and since that 

 period have killed eight or ten pairs. 



The nest is prettily constructed, and fixed in a partially pensile manner 

 between two twigs of a low bush, on a branch running horizontally from the 

 main stem. It is formed externally of grey lichens, slightly put together, 

 and lined with hair, chiefly from the deer and racoon. The female lays 

 four or five eggs, which are white, with a strong tinge of flesh-colour, and 

 sprinkled with brownish-red dots at the larger end. I am inclined to believe 

 that the bird raises only one brood in a season. 



The manners of this bird are not those of the Titmouse, Flycatcher, or 

 Warbler, but partake of those of all three. It has the want of shyness 

 exhibited in the Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Vireo. It hangs to bunches 

 of small berries, feeding upon them as a Titmouse does on buds of trees; 

 and again searches amongst the leaves and along the twigs of low bushes, 

 like most of the Warblers. On the other hand, it differs from all these in 

 their principal habits. Thus, it never snaps at insects on the wing, although 

 it pursues them; it never attacks small birds and kills them by breaking in 

 their skulls, as the Titmouse does; nor does it hold its prey under its foot in 

 the way of the Yellow-throated Vireo, a habit which allies the latter to the 

 Shrikes. 



