(_Vireo gilvus_) Vireo or Greenlet family
_Length_--5.5 to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English
sparrow.
_Male and Female_--Ashy olive-green above, with head and neck
ash-colored. Dusky line over the eye. Underneath whitish,
faintly washed with dull yellow, deepest on sides; no bars on
wings.
_Range_--North America, from Hudson Bay to Mexico.
_Migrations_--May. Late September or early October. Summer
resident.
This musical little bird shows a curious preference for rows of trees
in the village street or by the roadside, where he can be sure of an
audience to listen to his rich, continuous warble. There is a
mellowness about his voice, which rises loud, but not altogether
cheerfully, above the bird chorus, as if he were a gifted but slightly
disgruntled contralto. Too inconspicuously dressed, and usually too
high in the tree-top to be identified without opera-glasses, we may
easily mistake him by his voice for one of the warbler family, which
is very closely allied to the vireos. Indeed, this warbling vireo
seems to be the connecting link between them.
Morning and afternoon, but almost never in the evening, we may hear
him rippling out song after song as he feeds on insects and berries
about the garden. But this familiarity lasts only until nesting time,
for off he goes with his little mate to some unfrequented lane near a
wood until their family is reared, when, with a perceptibly happier
strain in his voice, he once more haunts our garden and row of elms
before taking the southern journey.