Research Grade Species #1265: Warbling vireo
Sometimes on nature walks I will confess that, until I am able to confidently see and identify a vireo, I don't consider myself a "real" birder. That day has still not come. You see, I was walking around Scarboro Pond with my boss, performing part of the Franklin Park Biodiversity Summer 2021 survey, when I heard a persistent and unfamiliar birdsong. "Probably a vireo," I muttered, my stock phrase for "beats the hell out of me what it is."
But iNaturalist provides a way to record an audio clip and upload it for an observation, which I did. I can't figure a way to relocate that clip here, so if you are interested, go check it out on iNat.
Vireos are small songbirds found only in the New World. They are mostly migratory and mostly arboreal. Birders with binoculars and long camera lenses see them frequently, but the rest of us usually miss them. They are fairly drab, fairly small, and spend most of their lives up above our eye level, feeding on insects in the summer and fruit in the winter.
Warbling vireos (Vireo gilvus) build a partially suspended nest, and are popular hosts for brown cowbirds. The cowbirds are nest parasites laying their eggs in the nests of other birds to let the host bird do the child rearing. In August of 2020 I found an abandoned vireo nest with a single, punctured cowbird egg in it. Not this time buddy, not this time.
