VIREOS: WESTERN WARBLING VIREO 
607 
September 1, 1883 (Henshaw); near the summit of the San Francisco Mountains, 
September 3, 1908, at 8,600 feet (Birdseye); and at Albuquerque, September 7, 1900 
(Birtwell). Two late birds were seen, September 20, 1908, in the Burro Mountains 
at 6,500 feet (Goldman); and a single specimen, September 25, 1889, at Cooney 
(Barrell). 
In the spring the first arrival was noted at Silver City the first week in May 
(Hunn). One noted the first of June, 1907, at Deming (Bailey), was probably a 
delayed migrant rather than a local breeder; and one taken May 31, 1892, a little 
south of there, at Dog Spring, Grant County, 4,800 feet (Mearns), was probably also 
a migrant, for this is the latest date any were taken, though collections were made 
there until the middle of June.—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —Hung from a forked twig of an aspen or other deciduous tree, or bush; 
cup-shaped, and smooth; made of vegetable fibers and bleached grasses, bound 
together with spider web and lined with fine grass stems. Eggs: 4 or 5, white, 
spotted around larger end with reddish, dark brown, and lilac. 
Food. —Insects and a few spiders make up over 97 per cent, caterpillars, moths, 
etc., amounting to nearly half the total food. In April they amount to 82 per cent 
of the food of the month. Among the other insects eaten are pupae of codling 
moths, stink bugs, leaf bugs, leaf hoppers, spittle insects, tree hoppers, black olive 
scale, and harmful beetles. Beneficial California ladybirds are largely eaten when 
unusually common, but injurious insects make up the greater part of the food. 
General Habits. —The leaf-tinted Western Warbling Vireo, whose 
warbling song is a pleasantly familiar sound in open sunny woods in the 
West, was found by Doctor Wetmore at Lake Burford in thickets 
lining gulches and among groves of aspen, one pair nesting in a choke- 
cherry early in June. 
On the Pecos, at 8,000 feet, about July 15, we found the Vireos 
singing and carrying food. They were seen, a month later, at the 
same altitude on Mora Creek and also found in the poplars on the 
mesa above at 10,300 feet. Between Twining and Amizett on August 
4,1904, “this friendty little associate who is an almost constant warbler,” 
as Mr. Ligon says, was still singing and a pair were feeding a late 
family of young out of the nest. High up in the Capitan Mountains 
during July and August, 1903, Mr. Gaut found them probably the 
most numerous of the smaller birds. He says, that “some could always 
be found feeding about the balsams and spruces.” In the Burro 
Mountains at least two were seen by Major Goldman the middle of 
September, 1908, feeding on wild grapes in a northeast slope canyon 
at 6,500 feet. 
Although, as Mr. Henshaw says, the Western Warbling Vireo 
“often finds its home in the gardens and streets of the towns, thus 
exhibiting the same traits of confiding familiarity which attach to it 
in the east, it is . . . equally numerous in the wild uncultivated 
districts where man has not yet penetrated. It frequents, for the 
most part, the deciduous trees, especially the cottonwoods, and ranges 
from the valleys high up into the mountains . . . and is almost 
