By BILL CHAISSON
By Bill Chaisson
I pretend that I don’t like red-eyed vireos. I tell people they are annoying. In most forested places they are the most common vireo species, and on a walk through the woods you will hear a lot of them, all day long, and late in the summer when other birds are done singing. And their song has been called “robin-like,” which is true enough, if it were a robin who could only get out three or four syllables at a time and never revealed that lovely double-timbre with which it graces the occasional note to show its relationship with the browner thrushes. No, the red-eyed vireo sounds like a guitarist who is absent-mindedly noodling in front of the television.
In fact, I like these birds. Their very abundance is impressive, as is their stamina. They can be heard singing on the hottest days of July, plonking along on their instrument while all other birds are silent. To me they are a comfort on the days when there doesn’t seem to be another bird alive in the woods. There are always vireos to look for.
And finding them is no easy matter. Hearing their song is one thing, but getting a glimpse of them requires diligent searching of the canopy. The red-eyed vireo is relatively larger than your average warbler and moves through the uppermost branches of deciduous trees at a dogged and persistent pace. Warblers flit, but vireos, when they are feeding, roam. They are endlessly looking for insects, mostly insects that eat leaves. They will sing while they forage, but unlike warblers, they will sometimes simply sit and sing for several minutes.
There are 14 species of vireo found in the United States and Canada. They represent the northern branch of a mostly tropical family that includes 70 members. After the warbling vireo, the red-eyed is the second most widespread in North America. In a generally unadorned family, the red-eyed is a sharp dresser.
Its back and tail are a smooth olive-green, its breast and belly are a clean white, and the undertail coverts are a light yellow. The head is the flashiest part of the bird: the crown is gray with a distinct dark border. A broad white stripe extends from the bill, over the eye and back to the nape. A dark gray stripe passes from the bill through the bright cherry-colored eye. At 6 inches long, the red-eyed vireo is larger than any warbler or any other local vireo.
Since moving to Sutton, I have noticed that I hear blue-headed vireos more often than the red-eyed. This a local aberration (perhaps caused by recent logging), as both the red-eyed and warbling are more common in the region. The song of the blue-headed strikes me as more pensive, lugubrious than the run-on sentence of the red-eyed. The warbling vireo song is entirely different; it sounds to me like a very hoarse and halting yellowthroat.
Because I hear relatively fewer of them, I feel more compelled to get a look at one. One extremely windy day, when I could barely discern any singing in the woods because of the hiss of the air through the leaves, I heard a red-eyed vireo. I stepped off the path and made my way toward the sound, my neck alternately watching my step and craned up at the canopy. To my surprise I found the bird this time. As usual, he—the genders are identical, but only the male sings—was in the topmost part of the tree, out on the distal twigs. The wind was tossing the branches around like a carnival ride, but the vireo seemed to be unphased. He clung to a thin perch and continued to sing, throwing back his head and parting his mandibles only slightly.
The song of the scarlet tanager has also been compared to that of the robin, but it is simpler. It also lacks the sweet, ringing tone of many notes of the robin’s song. In order words, it is a bit more like the song of the red-eyed vireo. However, the phrases of the tanager are longer and consistently declarative. One of the charms (or irritating qualities, depending on your taste) of the vireo’s song is its constant alternation of tone. It will make a couple of declarations along the lines of “Here I am! I’m over here!” which will be followed by “Don’t you see? Can’t you hear me?” Because this goes on for hours with scarcely an interruption, the back-and-forth takes on an absurdist quality. It is at least more varied than wood pewee’s endless two-note questioning and affirmation of its own identity. The red-eyed vireo’s song is, however, very similar to that of the Philadelphia vireo, but the latter bird is rare in New Hampshire and found only in the White Mountains and Coos County. It also sings about half as often as the red-eyed.
The nest of vireos are neat, little cups woven from fine vegetation and ornamented on the outside with cocoons, bits of wasp nest, and lichens. They are suspended between the forks of a branch, usually only about 10 feet from the ground, which is odd, considering it spends the rest of its time up high. The three to five eggs are white and speckled with brown and umber. Unfortunately the vireo is frequently parasitized by cowbirds, which inevitably smother or push the young vireos out of the nest.
This has not stopped the red-eyed vireo from being incredibly abundant. Since the 1960s it has increased its numbers over most of its range slowly and steadily, except the western U.S., where it has declined. Its population is estimated at 180 million. It prefers unbroken, mature deciduous forest. Clear-cutting will cause it to disappear locally and logging that leaves larger openings will decrease its presence.
Bill Chaisson, who has been a birdwatcher since age 11, is a former editor of the Eagle Times. He now works for the Town of Wilmot and lives in Sutton.
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