Pennsylvania Game News - July 2020 - 62

forests in the Amazon basin. The blueheaded is a medium-distant migrant,
spending its winters in shaded coffee
plantations, rainforests, cloud forests, or
coastal swamps from the coastal southeastern United States to Mexico and south
through Central America to Honduras.
Most yellow-throated vireos winter in
Central and South America, as far south
as the mountains of western Colombia
and northern Venezuela.
The yellow-throated vireo, sporting a
bright yellow throat, breast, and eye-ring,
is easily the flashiest of this mostly olive or
gray-backed family of birds. In addition,
it has a large bill, olive green upperparts
with a contrasting gray rump, and bluish
legs and feet. The yellow-throated and
the blue-headed have white wing-bars,
but the red-eyed's wings and back are a
plain olive/brown.
All three species forage high in the
trees, and are easier to hear than see
because of it. But telling their songs apart
can be challenging.
The blue-headed vireo has the highestpitched song with deliberate pauses in
between. It's slower than the red-eyed's
song, and with fewer notes per phrase.
The red-eyed vireo's pitch is a little
lower, droning, and monotonous, hence
its nickname the "preacher bird."
The yellow-throated vireo's song is
similar to, but lower-pitched than the blueheaded vireo. In the words of ornithologist
Aretas A. Saunders: "The song is long
continued, consisting of short phrases
separated by pauses like the songs of the
red-eyed and blue-headed vireos, but the
yellow-throated vireo's song is slower,
the pauses between phrases longer. The
quality of the sound is rather reedy and
less clear than the others (and) the phrases
are usually slurred together."
The yellow-throated vireo returns to
62

Pennsylvania in late April or early May. Its
arrival records at our central Pennsylvania
property range from April 29 to May 13.
Found from northcentral and southern
New England south to the Gulf Coast
and west to the eastern edge of the Great
Plains, this vireo is the most-southern
of the three species that breed on our
property.
It likes to breed in mature deciduous
forests and prefers large oaks and maples,
although any tall tree will do. Back in the
early 20th century, it also was a bird that
nested in towns, suburban areas and cities
as large as New York and Boston. Its disappearance there possibly resulted from
heavy spraying of insecticides on large
shade trees to combat Dutch elm disease.
In Pennsylvania, yellow-throated
habitat consists of tall, old trees widely or
closely spaced, but without an understory,
and often near a water source.
In our Ridge and Valley Province, it
builds its nest near a river or stream as high
as 1,300 feet above sea level. In Pennsylvania, it also breeds in the northeastern,
northwestern and southwestern corners
of the state, with low densities in the
Piedmont and the High Plateau regions.
The male arrives first and looks for
nest sites that he uses to tempt an arriving
female. He sings and calls until a female
comes close, then stands over as many as
three or four nest sites, each with a small
amount of nest material, his head lowered
as if he is building a nest. Sometimes he
performs a pre-mating swaying display
after he quivers his wings in response to
the female's wing-quivering.
Once they mate, she either accepts one
of his nest sites or they find another. But
unlike both the red-eyed and blue-headed
vireos, which nest in shrubs or saplings as
Pennsylvania Game News - July 2020

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