Green, Greenish Gray, Olive, and Yellowish Olive Birds 
“You see it — you know it — do you hear me? Do you be- 
lieve it?” is Wilson Flagg’s famous interpretation of the song of 
this commonest of all the vireos, that you cannot mistake with 
such a key. He calls the bird the preacher from its declamatory 
style: an up-and-down warble delivered with a rising inflection 
at the close and followed by an impressive silence, as if the little 
green orator were saying, “ I pause for a reply.” 
Notwithstanding its quiet coloring, that so closely resembles 
the leaves it hunts among, this vireo is rather more noticeable 
than its relatives because of its slaty cap and the black-and-white 
lines over its ruby eye, that, in addition to the song, are its marked 
characteristics. 
Whether she is excessively stupid or excessively kind, the 
mother-vireo has certainly won for herself no end of ridicule by 
allowing the cowbird to deposit a stray egg in the exquisitely 
made, pensile nest, where her own tiny white eggs are lying; 
and though the young cowbird crowd and worry her little fledg- 
lings and eat their dinner as fast as she can bring it in, no dis- 
pleasure or grudging is shown towards the dusky intruder that 
is sure to upset the rightful heirs out of the nest before they are 
able to fly. 
In the heat of a midsummer noon, when nearly every other 
bird’s voice is hushed, and only the locust seems to rejoice in 
the fierce sunshine, the little red-eyed vireo goes persistently 
about its business of gathering insects from the leaves, not flit- 
ting nervously about like a warbler, or taking its food on the 
wing like a flycatcher, but patiently and industriously dining 
where it can, and singing as it goes. 
When a worm is caught it is first shaken against a branch to 
kill it before it is swallowed. Vireos haunt shrubbery and trees 
with heavy foliage, all their hunting, singing, resting, and home- 
building being done among the leaves— never on the ground. 
White-eyed Vireo 
( Vireo noveboracensis) Vireo or Greenlet family 
Length — 5 to 5.3 inches. An inch shorter than the English 
sparrow. 
Male and Female — Upper parts bright olive-green, washed with 
grayish. Throat and underneath white; the breast and 
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