His place for singing was always about half way from the ground to the top of the maple, and he rarely came out in sight. The female was probably sitting on her nest, hard by. They are trim little olive-tinted birds and often rear two broods, I think, for they remain north till autumn.
Once while Elder Witham was with us, in haying time, Ellen exclaimed, inadvertently, as we were going in to sit down at table one day, "There's that preacher bird again!"
The Elder looked at her a moment and said slowly, "'Preacher-bird, preacher-bird,' what kind of a bird is that, young lady?"
Greatly abashed at her lapse, Ellen hardly knew how to best explain it, but Addison came to her rescue. "There are two of those vireos," he remarked in a perfectly natural, matter-of-fact tone. "One of them, the warbling vireo, they call the 'brigadier' on account of its peculiar note, and the other or red-eyed vireo, the 'preacher,' from its earnest manner of utterance. I don't know," Addison continued, with candid frankness, "that the names are very well chosen, but we have got in the habit of calling them that way."
The Elder listened to this, observing Addison closely, then appeared thoughtful for a moment and said, impressively, "Well, all God's creatures preach, if only we have ears to hear them." Ellen drew a long breath of relief, and after dinner, out on the wood-shed walk, she took Addison by the button and said, "You're a treasure, Ad; ask me for a cooky any time after this."
The brigadier, or warbling vireo, frequently sits on the tops of trees, when singing; while the preacher takes his stand midway from the ground upwards; the brigadier, too, more frequently joins in the great opening overture of all bird voices, at dawn, to usher in the new day, while preacher reserves his notes till the earlier choir has ceased its anthem. Withal the little preacher is much more apt to nest in trees near the habitations of men than his congener, the brigadier, who not unfrequently makes his abode at a distance from buildings, where forests border pastures, or old roads enter woody lands.
Another shrill, small songster of habits quite similar to the brigadier we used sometimes to hear, but rarely saw, on our way over to the "Aunt Hannah lot," an adjunct of the Old Squire's farm, to reach which we crossed a tract of sparse woods. Its notes, prolonged on a very sharp, high key, resembled the words, My fee-fee-fee-fee-fee! each louder and keener than the preceding.
Addison was quite uncertain as to this bird, during the first and second summers we were at the farm. We only saw it once or twice; for its favorite place, while singing, is at the top of some large dense tree; and we were never able to find its nest. Addison at length decided that it was an oven-bird, a surmise which he greatly desired to verify by finding the rest.
Later in life he has often laughed over our ignorance and our fruitless quests at that time.
Among the raspberry and blackberry briars, beside the stone wall on the south side of this same old road, leading to the Aunt Hannah lot, we used to see, occasionally, a deep blue indigo-bird, a very active little fellow, always flitting and hopping about amongst the briars. But we never heard it sing, nor utter any note, save rarely a petulant snip, snip, and never found its nest.