72 Birds Every Child Should Know 
carried one of the young birds all around the 
garden on a rake handle. 
Vireos are remarkably fine builders — among 
the very best. Although their nests are not so 
deep as the Baltimore orioles’, the shape and 
weave are similar. The red-eye usually prefers 
to swing her cradle from a small crotch in an 
oak or apple tree or sapling, and securely lace 
it through the rim on to the forked twigs. Nests 
vary in appearance, but you will notice that these 
weavers show a preference for dried grass as a 
foundation into which are wrought bits of bark, 
lichen, wasps’ nest “paper,” spider web, plant 
down, and curly vine tendrils. 
THE WHITE-EYED VIREO 
It is not often that you can get close enough 
to any bird to see the white of his eyes, but the 
brighter olive green of this vivacious little 
white-eyed vireo’s upper parts, his white breast, 
faintly washed with yellow on the sides, and the 
two yellowish white bars on his wings help you 
to recognise him at a distance. Imagine my 
surprise to meet him in Bermuda, over six 
hundred miles out at sea from the Carolina 
coast, where he, too, was taking a winter va- 
cation! In those beautiful islands, where our 
familiar catbirds and cardinals also abound, 
