NATURE STUDY. 



Volume I. AUG. -SEP., 1899. Numbers 7-8 



THE VIREOS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



BY 



C. J* Maynard. 



The vireos are a peculiar group of birds, and like the warblers, are ex- 

 clusively American. There are some seventy described species of vireos, and 

 these are scattered through the tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions of 

 our continent and its adjacent islands. Wherever they occur they are com- 

 mon, and during all of my travels from Northern New England to the islands 

 of the Caribbean, 1 have, in the proper time and season, seldom been long 

 out of hearing of the songs of one or more species of vireos. Indeed, in some 

 places where there is apparently very little to attract any birds, I have found 

 vireos exceedingly abundant. Thus, on the island of Key West where the 

 foliage is mainly reduced to low shrubbery and that occurs in isolated patches, 

 I found a white-eyed vireo very common and its call song was heard all 

 winter. The singular Bahama vireo occurs in such abundance in the thick 

 shrubbery of the Bahama Inlands as to outnumber all of the other species of 

 land birds on the keys. Several scores, if not hundreds, can be heard giving their 

 quaint call songs upon a still morning from almost any standpoint outside 

 the city of Nassau, and I have found them nearly as abundant on all the 

 keys, which I have visited, no matter how small, that are sufficiently clothed 

 with foliage to afford the birds shelter. 



Some species of vireos are exceedingly limited in distribution, inhabiting 

 in some cases, small islands. Thus the Bahama vireo is found only on the 

 islands from which it takes its name. Gundlach's vireo occurs in Cuba only, 

 Osburn's vireo in Jamaica, while Allen's vireo is confined to Cayman islands. 



Nearly all of the vireos which occur from Key West southward are con- 

 stantly resident where they breed, but the vireos of the eastern section of 

 the United States, with the exceptions named, are migratory. In summer 



