(_Vireo solitarius_) Vireo or Greenlet family
_Called also_: BLUE-HEADED VIREO
_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
vireo's 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.