146 RED-HEADED WOODPECKER.
The female differs from the male only in being smaller, and in having
the tints of the plumage somewhat less vivid.
Length 8 | inches.
Young Birds. Plate XXVII. Fig. 3 , 3 , 3 .
The young when fully fledged have the bill and iris dark brown, the
feet bluish. The head and neck are dark brownish-grey, mottled with
small streaks of dark brown; the back and wing-coverts of the same
colour, spotted with darker ; the primaries brownish-black, margined
with whitish, the secondaries yellowish-white, barred with black; the tail
brownish-black, tipped with white; the rump and under parts greyishwhite.
( 147 )
T H E S O L I T A R Y FLY-CATCHER, OR V I R E O .
VlREO SOLITARIUS, VlEILL.
P L A T E X X V I I I . M A L E A N D F E M A L E .
T H I S , reader, is one of the scarce birds that visit the United States from
the south, and I have much pleasure in being able to give you an account
of it, as hitherto little or nothing has been known of its history.
It is an inhabitant of Louisiana during the spring and summer months,
when it resorts to the thick cane-brakes of the alluvial lands near the
Mississippi, and the borders of the numberless swamps that lie in a direction
parallel to that river. It is many years since I discovered it, but
as I am not at all anxious respecting priority of names, I shall not insist
Upon this circumstance. In the month of May 1809,1 killed a male and
a female of this species, near the mouth of the Ohio, while on a shooting
expedition after young swans. The following spring, I killed a female
near Henderson in Kentucky. In 1821, I again procured a pair, with
their nest and eggs, near the mouth of Bayou La Fourche, on the Mississippi,
and since that period have killed eight or ten pairs.
The nest is prettily constructed, and fixed in a partially pensile manner
between two twigs of a low bush, on a branch running horizontally
from the main stem. It is formed externally of grey lichens, slightly put
together, and lined with hair, chiefly from the deer and raccoon. The
female lays four or five eggs, which are white, with a strong tinge of
£esh-colour, and sprinkled with brownish-red dots at the larger end. I
am inclined to believe that the bird raises only one brood in a season.
The manners of this bird are not those of the Titmouse, Fly-catcher,
or Warbler, but partake of those of all three. It has the want of shyness
exhibited in the Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Fly-catchers. It hangs
to bunches of small berries, feeding upon them as a Titmouse does on
buds of trees; and again searches amongst the leaves and along the twigs
of low bushes, like most of the Warblers. On the other hand, it differs
from all these in their principal habits. Thus, it never snaps at insects
on the wing, although it pursues them; it never attacks small birds and
kills them by breaking in their skulls, as the Titmouse does ; nor does it
K 2