O, round we go to the green again!
—G. Cooper, “’Round the Year.”
THE WHITE-EYED VIREO.
(Vireo noveboracensis.)
“And then the wren and vireo
Begin with song to overflow.”
—Thomas Hill—“Sunrise.”
The vireos form a peculiar and interesting family—the Vireonidæ, which includes about fifty species. All are strictly American and the larger number inhabit only the forest or shrubby regions of Central and South America. The name vireo signifies a green finch and is from the Latin word meaning “to be green.” The body color of nearly all the species is more or less olive green.
About fifteen species frequent the United States. These are all members of the genus Vireo, and some of them have a wide range, only equaled in extent by some of the warblers.
Dr. Coues has said of these birds: “Next after the warblers the greenlets (vireos) are the most delightful of our forest birds, though their charms address the ear and not the eye. Clad in simple tints that harmonize with the verdure, these gentle songsters warble their lays unseen, while the foliage itself seems stirred to music. In the quaint and curious ditty of the white-eye, in the earnest, voluble strains of the red-eye, in the tender secret that the warbling vireo confides in whispers to the passing breeze, he is insensible who does not hear the echo of thoughts he never clothes in words.”
The vireos are strikingly alike. In habit, in color, in structure, in size and in their home-building peculiarities they resemble each other. Their eggs are similar and “fashioned almost as from the same mold, and colored as if by the same brush.”