Length: About 6¼ inches.

Male and Female: Olive-green above, silvery white below; crown gray, bordered with a narrow black line; a broader white line over the eye, a dark streak through the eye; iris red or reddish-brown; wings and tail grayish-green, edged with olive.

Habitat: In open woodlands and along well-shaded roads.

Range: North and South America. Breeds from central Canada, northwestern, central, and eastern United States, to central Florida; winters in South America.

Note: A nasal whah, that sounds ill-natured and unpleasant.

Song: A series of phrases—incessant, monotonous,—that continue from morning until night, and during August, when most birds are quiet. Wilson Flagg called the Red-eye the “Preacher-bird” and wrote of him as follows:

“The Preacher is more generally known by his note, because he is incessant in his song, and particularly vocal during the heat of our long summer days, when only a few birds are singing. His style of preaching is not declamation. Though constantly talking, he takes the part of a deliberative orator, who explains his subject in a few words and then makes a pause for his hearers to reflect upon it. We might suppose him to be repeating moderately, with a pause between each sentence, ‘You see it—you know it—do you hear me?—do you believe it?’ All these strains are delivered with a rising inflection at the close, and with a pause, as if waiting for an answer.

RED-EYED VIREO

“He is never fervent, rapid, or fluent, but like a true zealot, he is apt to be tiresome from the long continuance of his discourse. When nearly all other birds have become silent, the little preacher still continues his earnest harangue, and is sure of an audience at this late period, when he has few rivals.”[130]

Mr. Forbush discovered that this preacher “practiced as he preached,” and tells us of his own observations in the following words:

“One sunny day in early boyhood I watched a vireo singing in a swampy thicket. He sang a few notes, his head turning meanwhile from side to side, his eyes scanning closely the nearby foliage. Suddenly his song ceased; he leaned forward,—sprang to another twig, snatched a green caterpillar from the under side of a leaf, swallowed it, and resumed his song. Every important pause in his dissertation signalized the capture of a larva. As the discourse was punctuated, a worm was punctured. It seems as if the preaching were a serious business with the bird; but this seeming is deceptive, for the song merely masks the constant vigilance and the sleepless eye of this premium caterpillar-hunter. In the discovery of this kind of game the bird has few superiors.”[131]

This vireo builds a very attractive nest of strips of bark and fiber, a soft basket hung at the fork of a branch. I recall one nest suspended only a few feet from the ground in a low tree on Cape Cod. We came upon the nest so suddenly that the little brooding mother looked at us with frightened eyes, but she remained at her post, and soon learned that we meant no harm. Many times a day we went by her precious cradle. At night we passed quietly, so as not to waken the faithful little mother-bird with her head tucked under her wing. Our flashlight never once disturbed her. Mr. Forbush says, “This vireo sleeps very soundly, and is sometimes so oblivious to the world that she may be approached and taken in the hand.”[132]

Burroughs wrote: “Who does not feel a thrill of pleasure when, in sauntering through the woods, his hat just brushes a vireo’s nest?... The nest was like a natural growth, hanging there like a fairy basket in the fork of a beech twig, woven of dry, delicate, papery, brown and gray wood products,—a part of the shadows and the green and brown solitude. The weaver had bent down one of the green leaves and made it a part of the nest; it was like the stroke of a great artist. Then the dabs of white here and there, given by the fragments of spider’s cocoons—all helped to blend it with the flickering light and shade.”[133]