ever having been
fortunate enough to know him) the white-eye is decidedly the most
ambitious, the warbling and the solitary are the most pleasing, while
the red-eye and the yellow-throat are very much alike, and both of them
rather too monotonous and persistent. It is hard, sometimes, not to get
out of patience with the red-eye's ceaseless and noisy iteration of his
trite theme; especially if you are doing your utmost to catch the notes
of some rarer and more refined songster. In my note-book I find an entry
describing my vain attempts to enjoy the music of a rose-breasted
grosbeak,--who at that time had never been a common bird with me,--while
"a pesky Wagnerian red-eye kept up an incessant racket."

The warbling vireo is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that
can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground
than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village
streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all
passers underneath. How many of them hear it and thank the singer is
unhappily another question.

The solitary vireo may once in a while be heard in a roadside tree,
chanting as familiarly as any red-eye; but he is much less abundant than
the latter, and, as a rule, more retiring. His ordinary song is like the
red-eye's and the yellow-throat's, except that it is pitched somewhat
higher and has a peculiar inflection or cadence, which on sufficient
acquaintance becomes quite unmistakable. This, however, is only the
smallest part of his musical gift. One morning in May, while strolling
through a piece of thick woods, I came upon a bird of this species, who,
all alone like myself, was hopping from one low branch to another, and
every now and then breaking out into a kind of soliloquizing song,--a
musical chatter, shifting suddenly to an intricate, low-voiced warble.
Later in the same day I found another in a chestnut grove. This last was
in a state of quite unwonted fervor, and sang almost continuously; now
in the usual disconnected vireo manner, and now with a chatter and
warble like what I had heard in the morning, but louder and longer. His
best efforts ended abruptly with the ordinary vireo call, and the
instantaneous change of voice gave to the whole a very strange effect.
The chatter and warble appeared to be related to each other precisely as
are those of the ruby-crowned kinglet; while the warble had a certain
tender, affectionate, some wou