THE WARBLING VIREO. 
311 
The Warbling Yireo is indeed allied to the genus of 
the Nightingale ( Sylvia ), whose song, from the descrip- 
tion of Mr. White in his Natural History of Selbourne, 
bears considerable resemblance to that of the Black-capt 
Flycatcher ( Muscicapa albicollis of Temminck.) When 
offended or irritated, our bird utters an angry 5 tshay 5 tshay , 
like the Cat-Bird and the other Yireos, and sometimes 
makes a loud snapping with his bill. The nest of the War- 
bling Yireo is generally pendulous, and ambitiously and 
securely suspended at great elevations. In our Elms I 
have seen one of these airy cradles at the very summit 
of one of the most gigantic, more than 100 feet from the 
ground. At other times they are not more than 50 to 70 
feet high. The only nest I have been able to examine 
was made externally of flat and dry sedge-grass blades, 
for which, as I have observed, is occasionally substituted 
strings of bass. These dry blades and strips are con- 
fined and tied into the usual circular form by caterpillars 5 
silk, blended with bits of wool, silk-weed lint, and an 
accidental and sparing mixture of vernal -grass tops and 
old apple blossoms. It was then very neatly lined with 
the small flat blades of the meadow grass, called Poa com - 
pressa. The eggs, 4, on which the bird was already sit- 
ting, were pure white, with a few small blackish purple 
spots of two sizes, and some confluent, straggling, hair-like 
lines, disposed chiefly around the greater end. The size 
of these eggs is very perceptibly smaller than those of 
the Red-Eyed Yireo, in one of whose nests I have seen 
two eggs of this species deposited, as well as one laid by 
the Cow Troopial ! an accidental parasitic practice, 
urged probably by the neglect of not providing a nest for 
the immediate occasion. 
The length of this bird is about 5 inches. Above pale olive-green, 
much mixed with ash on the neck and shoulders. Line over the 
