Birds and Nature Vol. 11 No. 2 [February 1902]

Various

Various

Birds and Nature Vol. 11 No. 2 [February 1902]

FEBRUARY

But Winter has yet brighter scenes – he boasts

Splendors beyond what gorgeous summer knows;

Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods

All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains

Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,

While the slant sun of February pours

Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!

The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,

And the broad arching portals of the grove

Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunks

Are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray,

Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,

Is studded with its trembling water-drops,

That glimmer with an amethystine light.

But round the parent-stem the long low boughs

Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide

The glassy floor. Oh! you might deem the spot

The spacious cavern of some virgin mine,

Deep in the womb of earth – where the gems grow,

And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud

While amethyst and topaz – and the place

Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam

That dwells in them. * * * *

    – William Cullen Bryant, “A Winter Piece.”

THE BLUE-HEADED VIREO

(Vireo solitarius.)

The Blue-headed Vireo, or its varieties, of which there are several, frequent nearly the whole of North America. The typical form of the species, that of our illustration, has a range covering Eastern North America and extending westward to the great plains. It breeds from Southern New England and the lake states northward to Hudson Bay and southward in the higher altitudes of the Alleghenies. It passes the winter in Cuba, Mexico and Central America. The Blue-headed Vireo is frequently called the Solitary Vireo, or Greenlet, because of its retiring habits. It is a bird of the forest and stays very close in these quiet retreats. Yet it is, as a rule, easy of approach, seeming to possess both curiosity and confidence. Mr. Bradford Torrey writes with enthusiasm regarding the pretty habits of this bird. He says: “Its most winning trait is its tameness. Wood bird as it is, it will sometimes permit the greatest familiarities. Two birds I have seen which allowed themselves to be stroked in the freest manner while sitting on the eggs, and which ate from my hand as readily as any pet canary; but I have seen others that complained loudly whenever I approached their tree. Perhaps they had had sad experiences.”

Possessing a happy and cheerful disposition, this species, like the other vireos, sings while working. Listening to them, we are reminded of the lines in “The Vision of Sir Launfal” —

“The little birds sang as if it were

The one day of summer in all the year,

And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.”

Fortunate, indeed, is he who has the pleasure of watching this Vireo working upon its home and uttering “inexpressibly sweet and tender love notes.”

Mr. Thomas M. Brewer says that the Blue-headed Vireo “usually makes a nest of coarse materials somewhat loosely put together, covering it with lichens, thus assimilating it to the moss-covered limb from which it is suspended.” The materials used, however, are not always the same. One nest, of which Mr. Brewer speaks, was “covered over, as if cemented, with bits of newspaper.” The external portion of another was “composed of the silky cover of cocoons, woven into a homogeneous and clothlike fabric, by some process quite inexplicable.” The nests are frequently constructed of fine bark fibers, withered grass and pine needles woven together with moss and lined with plant down, fine grass and small, fibrous roots.

Much has been written regarding the song of this handsome bird of the woods. The words of Mr. Torrey perhaps best describe it. He says: “The Solitary’s song is matchless for the tenderness of its cadence, while in peculiarly happy moments the bird indulges in a continuous warble that is rea