Length -- 5.5. to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- Lemon-yellow on throat, upper breast; line
around the eye and forehead. Yellow, shading into olive-green,
on head, back, and shoulders. Underneath white. Tail dark
brownish, edged with white. Wings a lighter shade, with two
white bands across, and some quills edged with white.
Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to Gulf of Mexico, and
westward to the Rockies. Winters in the tropics.
Migrations -- May. September. Spring and autumn migrant; more
rarely resident.
This is undoubtedly the beauty of the vireo family -- a group of neat, active,
stoutly built, and vigorous little birds of yellow, greenish, and white
plumage; birds that love the trees, and whose feathers reflect the coloring of
the leaves they hide, hunt, and nest among. "We have no birds," says Bradford
Torrey, "so unsparing of their music: they sing from morning till night."
The yellow-throated vireo partakes of all the family characteristics, but, in
addition to these, it eclipses all its relatives in the brilliancy of its
coloring and in the art of nest-building, which it has brought to a state of
hopeless perfection. No envious bird need try to excel the exquisite finish of
its workmanship. Happily, it has wit enough to build its pensile nest high
above the reach of small boys, usually suspending it from a branch overhanging
running water that threatens too precipitous a bath to tempt the young
climbers.
However common in the city parks and suburban gardens this bird may be during
the migrations, it delights in a secluded retreat overgrown with tall trees
and near a stream, such as is dear to the solitary vireo as well when the
nesting time approaches. High up in the trees we hear its rather sad,
persistent strain, that is more in harmony with the dim forest than with the
gay flower garden, where, if the truth must be told, its song is both
monotonous and depressing. Mr. Bicknell says it is the only vireo that sings
as it flies.