The Red -eyed Vireo 
395 
Travels of 
the Vireo 
night, stopping to rest in groves, orchards and forests as they proceed, 
the Vireos journey on, some of them passing downward through western 
Texas and Mexico to the far-away Tropics. Others 
reach the Gulf of Mexico along the coast of 
Louisiana, Mississippi or Western Florida, and there, 
after a brief pause, they plunge out across the tumbling waters of 
the sea and never sight land again for six or eight hundred miles until 
they reach Yucatan or Central America. Through the interminable 
jungles of South America they continue their journey until they reach 
the regions of the Equator, many going on southward into southern Brazil. 
Here, in the great steaming forests, they remain for some months 
until the instinct of migration again begins to beat in their veins. Then 
our little friends turn northward, and those that have survived in due 
time gain the boundaries of the United States. A little time passes, and 
then one Spring morning we again hear their cries in the grove about the 
house. Wilson Flagg once said that the words which the Red-eyed Vireo 
sings are clearly these: “You see it — you know it — do you hear me? 
Do you believe it?” Never do I pause to listen to one of these birds 
without recalling these words, for the music comes in a series of groups 
of short, clear, questioning calls and Mr. Flagg’s interpretation is perhaps 
as accurate as any that has been suggested. 
How little we know of the courtship of birds ! Dr. W. M. Tyler, of 
Lexington, Massachusetts, writing in “Bird Lore” some time ago related 
this remarkable experience : 
“This afternoon about six o’clock, I saw a pair of Red-eyed Vireos 
acting in a manner new to me. They were in a small gray birch tree, 
twelve feet from the ground, and almost over my head. The two birds 
were very near each other ; so near that their bills 
might have touched^, although they did not. The 
male, or at least the bird who played the active 
role, faced the side of the other bird, so that their bodies were at 
right angles. The bird who, from her passive actions, I assumed, but 
perhaps wrongly, to be the female, sat crouched low on her perch, with 
the feathers slightly puffed out. But, although in the attitude of a sick 
bird, she appeared in good health, I thought, and I am certain, that she 
gave close attention to the strange actions of her companion. The bird I 
have called the male, and I think it is safe to so consider him, was con- 
stantly in motion. He rocked his body, especially his head, from side to 
side, his bill sweeping over the upper parts of the other bird, never touch- 
ing her, nor, indeed, coming very near it, for his head was above and a 
little to one side of her back. In swinging from side to side, he moved 
slowly, but with a tenseness suggesting strong emotion. In contrast to 
Making 
Love 
