But Winter has yet brighter scenes—he boasts
Splendors beyond what gorgeous summer knows;
Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods
All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains
Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,
While the slant sun of February pours
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,
And the broad arching portals of the grove
Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunks
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,
Is studded with its trembling water-drops,
That glimmer with an amethystine light.
But round the parent-stem the long low boughs
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide
The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine,
Deep in the womb of earth—where the gems grow,
And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud
While amethyst and topaz—and the place
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam
That dwells in them. * * * *
—William Cullen Bryant, “A Winter Piece.”
THE BLUE-HEADED VIREO.
(_Vireo solitarius._)
The Blue-headed Vireo, or its varieties, of which there are several,
frequent nearly the whole of North America. The typical form of the
species, that of our illustration, has a range covering Eastern North
America and extending westward to the great plains. It breeds from
Southern New England and the lake states northward to Hudson Bay and
southward in the higher altitudes of the Alleghenies. It passes the
winter in Cuba, Mexico and Central America. The Blue-headed Vireo is
frequently called the Solitary Vireo, or Greenlet, because of its
retiring habits. It is a bird of the forest and stays very close in
these quiet retreats. Yet it is, as a rule, easy of approach, seeming to
possess both curiosity and confidence. Mr. Bradford Torrey writes with
enthusiasm regarding the pretty habits of this bird. He says: “Its most
winning trait is its tameness. Wood bird as it is, 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; but I have seen
others that complained loudly whenever I approached their tree. Perhaps
they had had sad experiences.”
Possessing a happy and cheerful disposition, this species, like the
other vireos, sings while working. Listening to them, we are reminded of
the lines in “The Vision of Sir Launfal”—
“The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year,
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.”
Fortunate, indeed, is he who has the pleasure of watching this Vireo
working upon its home and uttering “inexpressibly sweet and tender love
notes.”
Mr. Thomas M. Brewer says that the Blue-headed Vireo “usually makes a
nest of coarse materials somewhat loosely put together, covering it with
lichens, thus assimilating it to the moss-covered limb from which it is
suspended.” The materials used, however, are not always the same. One
nest, of which Mr. Brewer speaks, was “covered over, as if cemented,
with bits of newspaper.” The external portion of another was “composed
of the silky cover of cocoons, woven into a homogeneous and clothlike
fabric, by some process quite inexplicable.” The nests are frequently
constructed of fine bark fibers, withered grass and pine needles woven
together with moss and lined with plant down, fine grass and small,
fibrous roots.
Much has been written regarding the song of this handsome bird of the
woods. The words of Mr. Torrey perhaps best describe it. He says: “The
Solitary’s song is matchless for the tenderness of its cadence, while in
peculiarly happy moments the bird indulges in a continuous warble that
is really enchanting.” It has, too, a musical chatter and a pretty
trilled whistle.
In Mr. Keyser’s experience “the song was varied and lively, sometimes
running high in the scale, and had not that absent-minded air which
marks the roundelay of the warbling vireo. It is much more intense and
expressive.”
Mr. Brewer describes the song as a “prolonged and very peculiar ditty,
repeated at frequent intervals and always identical. It begins with a
lively and pleasant warble, of a gradually ascending scale, which at a
certain pitch suddenly breaks down into a falsetto note. The song then
rises again in a single note and ceases.”
The notes of the female suggest to Mr. Burroughs “the bleating of a tiny
lambkin.” To Mr. Nuttall “its song seems to be intermediate between that
of the red-eyed and the yellow-breasted species, having the ‘preai,
preai,’ of the latter and the fine variety of the former in its tones.”
To all “the music of the Solitary Vireo is delicious.”
[Illustration: BLUE-HEADED VIREO
(Vireo solitarius.)
⅗ Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]