“The _Red-eyed Vireo_, excepting the Catbird, is the most talkative bird that we have; in fact, so fond is he of the sound of his own voice that he is rarely silent during the daylight hours. Then, too, his eloquence has a questioning and arguing quality that made Wilson Flagg give him the nickname of ‘The Preacher,’ by which he will always be known. ‘You see it—you know it—do you hear me? Do you believe it?’ he hears this voice say, and if you keep these words in your mind, you will recognize the bird the first time that you hear his song. You may hear the Vireo’s words twenty times for every peep that you may get of his person; not that he is at all shy, but he is restlessness in feathers, while unlike many talkers he both talks and works at the same time. Now he is at the end of a branch close to you, then on the opposite side of the tree, from whence he works his way to the very top, clearing the small limbs and twigs of insects as he goes. “After trying in vain to see him, one day when you are not thinking of this or any other bird, you will pass a familiar tree, one of the apples, perhaps, whose branches nearly sweep the ground. Your eye in going idly over the leaves halts at an object that is partly suspended between the forked twigs of a branch almost under your eye. You look again; it is a nest, pocket-shaped, and fastened between the twigs as the heel of a stocking is held between knitting needles. The nest itself is finely woven of plant-down, soft bark, and perhaps a few shreds of paper. “You step nearer; a little head with a long, curved beak rises slightly above the nest,—Madam is at home. An eye holds your own,—a red eye with a long, clear, white mark over it by way of an eyebrow. Then you notice the head wears a gray cap bordered with black. The bird perhaps breathes a little faster, and the prettily shaded olive-green back heaves and the wings twitch as if to make ready to fly, otherwise the bird does not budge, but simply sits and waits for you to go; this, if you are really one of the Kind Hearts, you will do very soon. “True, you may come back the next day and the next, and from a comfortable distance watch the Vireo’s housekeeping and the progress of her brood, only please do not touch either the nest or its contents. After she has done with it and autumn comes, you may have it for your own and see for yourself how wonderfully it is made. “All sorts of amusing bits of printing from newspapers have been found woven into these nests, and there is one in Goldilocks’ cabinet, that I will show you later, that says upon the shred of paper,—‘an eight-room flat,—electric light and —— —— improvements,’ the missing words being concealed where the paper was woven under the plant fibres. [Illustration: F. M. Chapman, Photo. RED-EYED VIREO ON NEST]