(_Vireo olivaceus_) Vireo or Greenlet family
_Called also_: THE PREACHER
_Length_--5.75 to 6.25 inches. A fraction smaller than the
English sparrow.
_Male and Female_--Upper parts light olive-green; well-defined
slaty-gray cap, with black marginal line, below which, and
forming an exaggerated eyebrow, is a line of white. A brownish
band runs from base of bill through the eye. The iris is
ruby-red. Underneath white, shaded with light greenish yellow
on sides and on under tail and wing coverts.
_Range_--United States to Rockies and northward. Winters in
Central and South America.
_Migrations_--April. October. Common summer resident.
"You see it--you know it--do you hear me? Do you believe 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 fledglings and eat their
dinner as fast as she can bring it in, no displeasure 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 flitting 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.