White-eyed vireo

The white-eyed vireo (Vireo griseus) is a small songbird. It breeds in the southeastern United States from New Jersey west to northern Missouri and south to Texas and Florida, and also in eastern Mexico, northern Central America, Cuba and the Bahamas.

White-eyed vireo

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Vireonidae
Genus: Vireo
Species:
V. griseus
Binomial name
Vireo griseus
(Boddaert, 1783)

Populations on the US Gulf coast and further south are resident, but most North American birds migrate south in winter.

This vireo frequents bushes and shrubs in abandoned cultivation or overgrown pastures. The grass-lined nest is a neat cup shape, attached to a fork in a tree branch by spider webs. It lays 3–5 dark-spotted white eggs. Both the male and female incubate the eggs for 12–16 days. The young leave the nest 9–11 days after hatching.

The white-eyed vireo is 13–15 cm (5.1–5.9 in) in length. Its head and back are a greyish olive, and the underparts are white with yellow flanks. The wings and tail are dark, and there are two white wing bars on each wing. The eyes have white irises, and are surrounded by yellow spectacles. Sexes are similar.

The white-eyed vireo's song is a variable and rapid six to seven note phrase, starting and ending with a sharp chick.

During the breeding season, the diet of this species consists almost exclusively of insects, primarily caterpillars. In the autumn and winter it supplements its diet of insects with berries.

White-eyed vireo (Vireo griseus) at Clarks River National Wildlife Refuge

Taxonomy

The white-eyed vireo was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire naturelle des oiseaux.[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.[3] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Tanagra grisea in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.[4] Buffon specified that his specimen had come from Louisiana, but in 1945 the type locality was restricted to New Orleans.[5][6] The white-eyed vireo is now placed in the genus Vireo was introduced in 1808 by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot.[7][8] The word vireo was used by Latin authors for a small green migratory bird, probably a Eurasian golden oriole but a European greenfinch has also been suggested. The specific epithet griseus is Medieval Latin for grey.[9]

Six subspecies are recognised:[8]

  • V. g. griseus (Boddaert, 1783) – central and east USA (includes noveboracensis)[10][11]
  • V. g. maynardi Brewster, 1887 – south Florida (southeast USA)
  • V. g. bermudianus Bangs & Bradlee, 1901 – Bermuda
  • V. g. micrus Nelson, 1899 – south Texas (south USA) and northeast Mexico
  • V. g. perquisitor Nelson, 1900 – east Mexico
  • V. g. marshalli Phillips, AR, 1991 – east central Mexico

The northern subspecies, V. g. noveboracensis, occupies most of the range of this species and is fully migratory. This sub-species is larger and has more brightly colored plumage than all other subspecies.

The resident southeastern coastal plain race, V. g. griseus is a slightly smaller and duller colored subspecies. It does not typically migrate out of its breeding range in the winter.

The resident Florida Keys race, V. g. maynardi, is greyer above and whiter below, and the south Texan V. g. micrus is like a smaller maynardi.

V. g. bermudianus is endemic to Bermuda.[12][13] This has shorter wings and a duller plumage. Along with other endemic and native Bermudian birds, it was threatened with extinction following the loss of 8 million Bermuda cedar trees in the 1940s, and is now quite rare. This species is listed under the Bermuda Protected Species Act 2003.

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References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Vireo griseus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de (1780). "Le gris-olive". Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (in French). Volume 7. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. p. 392.
  3. Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de; Martinet, François-Nicolas; Daubenton, Edme-Louis; Daubenton, Louis-Jean-Marie (1765–1783). "Tangara olive, de la Lousiane". Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle. Volume 8. Paris: De L'Imprimerie Royale. Plate 714 Fig. 1.
  4. Boddaert, Pieter (1783). Table des planches enluminéez d'histoire naturelle de M. D'Aubenton : avec les denominations de M.M. de Buffon, Brisson, Edwards, Linnaeus et Latham, precedé d'une notice des principaux ouvrages zoologiques enluminés (in French). Utrecht. p. 45, Number 714 Fig. 1.
  5. Burleigh, T.D.; Lowery, G.H. Jr (1945). "Races of Vireo griseus in Eastern United States". American Midland Naturalist. 34: 526–530. JSTOR 2421142.
  6. Paynter, Raymond A. Jr, ed. (1968). Check-list of Birds of the World. Volume 14. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. pp. 113–114.
  7. Vieillot, Louis Jean Pierre (1808). Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amérique Septentrionale : contenant un grand nombre d'espèces décrites ou figurées pour la première fois (in French). Volume 1. Paris: Chez Desray. p. 83. The title page bears a date of 1807 but the volume did not appear until the following year.
  8. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Shrikes, vireos, shrike-babblers". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
  9. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 179, 402. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  10. Dickinson, E.C.; Christidis, L., eds. (2014). The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: Passerines (4th ed.). Eastbourne, UK: Aves Press. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-9568611-2-2.
  11. Remsen, J.V., Jr.; Cardiff, S.W.; Dittmann, D.L. (1998). "Status and natural history of birds of Louisiana. I. Vireos (Vireonidae)" (PDF). Journal of Louisiana Ornithology. 4 (2): 59–102.
  12. "White-eyed Vireo". Bermuda Department of Conservation Services. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  13. Audubon Society of Bermuda: White-eyed vireo


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