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. Wnters 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.
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