144 
THE SOLITARY YIREO, OR GREENLET 
VlREO SOLITARIES, V kill. 
PLATE COXXXIX. — 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, 1 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 Hender^n 
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. 
