THE VIREOS:
ANOTHER STRICTLY AMERICAN FAMILY
Red-Eyed Vireo
White-Eyed Vireo
Yellow-Throated Vireo
Warbling Vireo
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THE VIREOS
You know that if the birds should suddenly perish, there wouldn't be a
leaf, a blade of grass, or any green thing left upon the earth within
a few years--it would be uninhabitable.
When Dame Nature, the most thorough of housekeepers, gave to the birds
the task of restraining insects within bounds so that man and beast
could live, she gave the care of foliage to the vireos. It is true
that most of the warblers, and a few other birds too, hunt for their
food among the leaves, but with nothing like the vireo's painstaking
care and thoroughness. The nervous, restless warblers flit from twig
to twig without half exploring the foliage; whereas the deliberate,
methodical vireos search leisurely above and below it, cocking their
little heads so as to look up at the under side of the leaf above them
and to peck off the destroyers hidden there--bugs of many kinds and
countless little worms, caterpillars, weevils, inchworms, May beetles,
and leaf-eating beetles. Singing as they go, no birds more
successfully combine work and play.
Because they spend their lives among the foliage, the vireos are
protectively coloured; with {70} soft grayish or olive green on their
backs, wings, and tail, whitish or yellow below. Some people call them
greenlets. They are all a little smaller than sparrows. More
inconspicuous birds it would be hard to find or more abundant,
although so commonly overlooked except by people on the look-out for
them. Where the new growth of foliage at the ends of the branches is
young and tender, many insects prefer to lay their eggs that their
babies may have the most dainty fare as soon as they are hatched. They
do not reckon upon the vireos' visits.
Toward the end of April or the first of May, these tireless gleaners
return to us from Central and South America where they have spent the
winter, which of course you know, is no winter on the other side of
the equator, but a continuation of summer for them. Competition for
food being more fierce in the tropics than it is here, millions of
birds besides the warblers and vireos travel from beyond the Isthmus
of Panama to the United States and back again every year in order that
they may live in perpetual summer with an abundance of food. If any
child thinks that birds are mere creatures of pleasure, who sing to
pass the time away, he doesn't begin to understand how hard they must
work for a living. They cannot limit their labours to an eight-hour
day. However, they keep cheerful through at least sixteen busy hours.
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THE RED-EYED VIREO
Almost everywhere in the Eastern United States and Canada, the
red-eyed vireo is the most common member of his family. The only
individual touch to his costume that helps to distinguish him is a
gray cap edged with a black line which runs parallel to his
conspicuous white eyebrow. He wears a dull olive coat and a white
vest. But listen to the Preacher! You have no need to meet him face to
face in order to know him: _"You see it--you know it--do you hear
me?--do you believe it?"_ he propounds incessantly through the long
summer days, even after most other birds are silent. You cannot
mistake his voice. With a rising inflection at the end of each short,
jerky sentence, he asks a question very distinctly and sweetly, then
pauses an instant as if waiting for a reply--an unusually courteous
orator. His monotonous monologue, repeated over and over again, comes
to us from the elms and maples in the village street, the orchard and
woodland, where he keeps steadily and deliberately at work. Some boys
say they can whittle better if they whistle. Vireos seem to hunt more
thoroughly if they sing.
Like the rest of his kin, the red-eyed vireo is quite tame. A little
girl I know actually stroked the pretty head of a mother bird as she
sat brooding in her exquisite nest, and a week later {72} carried one
of the young birds all around the garden on a rake handle.
Vireos are remarkably fine builders--among the very best. Although
their nests are not so deep as the Baltimore orioles', the shape and
weave are similar. The red-eye usually prefers to swing her cradle
from a small crotch in an oak or apple tree or sapling, and securely
lace it through the rim on to the forked twigs. Nests vary in
appearance, but you will notice that these weavers show a preference
for dried grass as a foundation into which are wrought bits of bark,
lichen, wasps' nest "paper," spider web, plant down, and curly vine
tendrils.
THE WHITE-EYED VIREO
It is not often that you can get close enough to any bird to see the
white of his eyes, but the brighter olive green of this vivacious
little white-eyed vireo's upper parts, his white breast, faintly
washed with yellow on the sides, and the two yellowish white bars on
his wings help you to recognise him at a distance. Imagine my surprise
to meet him in Bermuda, over six hundred miles out at sea from the
Carolina coast, where he, too, was taking a winter vacation! In those
beautiful islands, where our familiar catbirds and cardinals also
abound, {73} the white-eyed vireo is the most common bird to be seen.
His sweet, vigorous, irregular interrogation may be heard all day. But
there he is known by quite a different name--"Chick of the Village."
It was a pleasant shock to hear, _"Now, who are you, eh?"_ piquantly
sung out at me, a stranger in the islands, by this old acquaintance in
a hibiscus bush within a few steps of the pier where the steamer
landed.
In the United States where he nests, his manners are less sociable; in
fact they are rather pert, even churlish at times, and never very
friendly. Here he loves to hide in such low, briery, bushy tangles as
the chat and catbird choose. By no stretch of the imagination would
his chic Bermuda name fit him here, for he has little to do with
villages and he resents your advances toward more intimate
acquaintance with harsh, cackling scoldings, half to himself, half to
you, until you, in turn, resent his impertinence and leave him alone--
just what the independent little fellow wanted. He has a strong,
decided character, you perceive.
His precious nest, so jealously guarded, is a deeper cup than that of
his cousin with the red eye, deeper than that of any of the other
vireos, and it usually contains three favourite materials in addition
to those generally chosen by them: they are bits of wood usually
stolen from some woodpecker's hole, shreds of paper, {74} and yards
and yards of fine caterpillar silk, by which the nest is hung from its
slender fork in the thicket. It also contains, not infrequently, alas!
a cowbird's most unwelcome egg.
THE YELLOW-THROATED VIREO
In a family not conspicuous for its fine feathers, this is certainly
the beauty. The clear lemon yellow worn at its throat spreads over its
vest; its coat is a richer and more yellowish green than the other
vireos wear, and its two white wing-bars are as conspicuous as the
white-eyed vireo's. Moreover its mellow and rich voice, like a
contralto's, is raised to a higher pitch at the end of a sweetly sung
triplet. _"See me; I'm here; where are you?"_ the singer inquires over
and over again from the trees in the woodland, or perhaps in the
village when nesting duties are not engrossing. Don't mistake it for
the chat simply because its throat is yellow.
As this is the beauty of the family, so is it also the best nest
builder.
THE WARBLING VIREO
High up in the top of elms and maples that line village streets where
the red-eyed vireo loves {75} to hunt, even among the trees of so busy
a thoroughfare as Boston Common, an almost continuous warble in the
early summer indicates that some unseen singer is hidden there; but
even if you get a glimpse of the warbling vireo you could not tell him
from his red-eyed cousin at that height. Modestly dressed, without
even a white eye-brow or wing-bars to relieve his plain dusty olive
and whitish clothes, he is the least impressive member of his
retiring, inconspicuous family. He asks you no questions in jerky,
colloquial triplets of song, so you may know by his voice at least
that he is not the red-eyed vireo. Some self-conscious birds, like the
song sparrow, mount to a conspicuous perch before they begin to sing,
as if they had to deliver a distinct number on a programme before a
waiting audience. Not so with this industrious little gleaner to whom
singing and dining seem to be a part of the same performance--one and
inseparable. He sings as he goes, snatching a bit of insect food
between warbles.
Although towns do not affright him, he really prefers wooded
border-land and clearings, especially where birch trees abound, when
it is time to rear a family.
[Illustration]
A red-eyed vireo baby in his cradle
[Illustration]
Out of it
[Illustration]
Home of the loggerhead shrike, with plenty of convenient hooks for
this butcher bird to hang meat on.
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