Length -- 5.5 to 7 inches. A little smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Dusky olive above; head bluish gray, with a white line
around the eye, spreading behind the eye into a patch. Beneath
whitish, with yellow-green wash on the sides. Wings dusky
olive, with two distinct white bars. Tail dusky, some quills
edged with white.
Female -- Similar, but her head is dusky olive.
Range -- United States to plains, and the southern British
provinces. Winters in Florida and southward.
Migrations -- May. Early October. Common during migrations; more
rarely a summer resident south of Massachusetts.
By no means the recluse that its name would imply, the solitary vireo, while a
bird of the woods, shows a charming curiosity about the stranger with
opera-glasses in hand, who has penetrated to the deep, swampy tangles, where
it chooses to live. Peering at you through the green undergrowth with an eye
that seems especially conspicuous because of its encircling white rim, it is
at least as sociable and cheerful as any member of its family, and Mr.
Bradford Torrey credits it with "winning tameness." "Wood-bird as it is," he
says, "it will sometimes permit the greatest familiarities. Two birds I have
seen, which allowed themselves to be stroked in the freest manner, while
sitting on the eggs, and which ate from my hand as readily as any pet canary."
The solitary vireo also builds a pensile nest, swung from the crotch of a
branch, not so high from the ground as the yellow-throated vireos nor so
exquisitely finished, but still a beautiful little structure of pine-needles,
plant-fibre, dry leaves, and twigs, all lichen-lined and bound and rebound
with coarse spiders' webs.
The distinguishing quality of this vireo's celebrated song is its tenderness:
a pure, serene uplifting of its loving, trustful nature that seems inspired by
a fine spirituality.