“Incubation takes place in June and July. The nest is rather a neat structure, though made of coarse materials. It is a deep cup, about as large as an ordinary tea-cup, narrowed at the mouth, composed of dried grass, intermixed with silk-cotton, and sparingly with lichen and spiders’ nests, and lined with thatch-threads. It is usually suspended between two twigs, or in the fork of one, the margin being over-woven so as to embrace the twigs. This is very neatly performed. Specimens vary much in beauty,—one before me is particularly neat and compact, being almost globular in form, except that about one-fourth of the globe is wanting, as it is a cup. Though the walls are not thick, they are very firm and close, the materials being well woven. These are fibres of grass-like plants, moss, a few dry leaves, flat papery spiders’ nests, with a little cotton or down for the over-binding of the edges. It is lined smoothly with fibres, I know not of what plant, as slender as human hair. Another nest, similarly formed, has the cavity almost filled with a mass of white cotton, which looks as if thrust in by man, but that those filaments of the mass that are in contact with the sides, are interwoven with the other materials. As it is picked cotton, it must be a bit stolen from some house or yard, not plucked by the bird from the capsule. The eggs, commonly three in number, are delicately white, with a few small red-brown spots thinly scattered over the surface, sometimes very minute and few. Their form is a somewhat pointed oval, measuring nine-tenths of an inch by rather less than thirteen-twentieths.”
Our figure is about three-fourths of the size of life, and represents the adult male from one of Dr. Heermann’s specimens obtained in Florida.
DESCRIPTION AND TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS.
Genus Vireosylvia. Bonaparte, Geog. and Comp. List of the Birds of Europe and North America, p. 26. (1838.)
Size small, but with the general form compact and stout; bill straight, rather long, wide at base; upper mandible slightly notched near the point; gonys slightly ascending; wing long, second quill usually longest; tail rather short, even; legs and toes moderate in length, slender. A genus containing five or six species, all of which are American. Colors in all known species olive green, narrowly shaded and tinged with yellow.
Vireosylvia altiloqua. (Vieillot.) Muscicapa altiloqua. Vieill., Ois. d’Am., Sept. 1, p. 67, pl. 38. (1807.) Vireo longirostris. Swains., Fau. Bor. Am., II. p. 237. (1831.) Phyllomanes mysticalis. Cabanis, Erichson’s Archiv., 1837, p. 348? Turdus hispaniolensis. Gm., Syst. Nat., I. p. 822?
Form. Bill long, strong, wide at base, with a few pairs of short, weak bristles; wing long; second quill longest; tail moderate, truncate; legs rather long, slender.
Dimensions. Total length of skin, 5½ inches; wing, 3½; tail, 2¼ inches.
Colors. A narrow line of black running downward on each side of the neck, from the base of the lower mandible; head above ashy-olive; other upper parts olive-green, tinged with yellowish; quills and tail olive-brown, edged outwardly with greenish-yellow; a line of yellowish-white running from the nostril over the eye; between the eye and the bill dark olive; under parts white, nearly pure on the throat, and on the other parts tinged with ashy and greenish-yellow, especially on the sides; bill light corneous; irides red.
Hab. Florida, West Indies, and South America. Spec. in Mus. Acad., Philada.