“There are several other Vireos with richer, more melodious voices that you will learn to name after you have made your first bowing and speaking acquaintances in Birdland. The Red-eyed, however, is the largest and most easily named of them all if you remember his love of preaching, his white eyebrow, and gray, black-edged cap. He will be with us all summer, leaving in early October with the last flocks of Barn Swallows. RED-EYED VIREO When overhead you hear a bird Who talks, or rather, chatters, Of all the latest woodland news, And other trivial matters, Who is so kind, so very kind, She never can say no, And so the nasty Cowbird Drops an egg among her row Of neat white eggs. Behold her then, The Red-eyed Vireo! —Faith C. Lee, in _Bird-Lore_. THREE LISPERS AND A VENTRILOQUIST “When the trees are putting on their best and greenest leaves, many new sounds mingle with the hum of insects among the branches. You pause and look up in the confusing mass of fluttering green and sunbeams to find, if possible, the origin of these sounds. “Many feathered shapes are fluttering about, some flying after the manner of birds, while others flit and move in the irregular fashion of butterflies, while the notes they utter, instead of being full-throated, have a sort of childish lisp. “These birds belong to the tribe of _Warblers_; a few do really warble, but for the majority the _Lispers_ would be a more appropriate title. Listen! there comes a little call now, as if the bird had kept his beak half closed, ‘Sweet-sweetie-sweazy!’ and a bird of light build and no larger than a Chippy flits backward from the twig where he was perching and alights on one below, following in his flight one of the insects of which he is a valiant destroyer, as he belongs really to both the order of Tree Trappers and Sky Sweepers. “Now is your chance; he is at rest for a moment; look at him,—black of back, head, and breast, some salmon-red feathers on wings and tail, and the sides of breast rich, pure salmon, and the belly white. What a brave little uniform, almost the Oriole colours. One of the Wise Men who has met the Redstart in his winter home in Cuba says that there he is called ‘_Candelita_, the little torch that flashes in the gloomy depth of tropical forests.’ “There is nothing secluded about him, however, except the depths of shade where he feeds and weaves his nest, in texture much like the Vireo’s. His mate is also a very dainty bird, but his flame colour and black is replaced by pale yellow and gray. “The Redstart is a bird to know in May and June, though it does not leave until early in October. _The Summer Yellowbird_