Yellow-throated vireo

The yellow-throated vireo (Vireo flavifrons) is a small American songbird.

Yellow-throated vireo
Adult
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Vireonidae
Genus: Vireo
Species:
V. flavifrons
Binomial name
Vireo flavifrons
(Vieillot, 1808)
Range

Etymology

"Vireo" is a Latin word referring to a green migratory bird, perhaps the female golden oriole, possibly the European greenfinch. The specific flavifrons is from the Latin words flavus, "yellow", and frons, "forehead".[2][3]

Description
Yellow-throated vireo Galveston, Texas

Adults are mainly olive on the head and upperparts with a yellow throat and white belly; they have dark eyes with yellow "spectacles". The tail and wings are dark with white wing bars. They have thick blue-grey legs and a stout bill.

Measurements:[4]

  • Length: 5.1-5.9 in (13-15 cm)
  • Weight: 0.5-0.7 oz (15-21 g)
  • Wingspan: 9.1 in (23 cm)

Habitat and distribution

Their breeding habitat is open deciduous woods in southern Canada and the eastern United States.

These birds migrate to the deep southern United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. They are very rare vagrants to western Europe; there is a September 1990 record from Kenidjack Valley in Cornwall, Great Britain, and September 1998 record from Heligoland, a small German archipelago in the German Bight.[5]

Diet and behaviour

They forage for insects high in trees. They also eat berries, especially before migration and in winter when they are occasionally seen feeding on gumbo-limbo (Bursera simaruba) fruit.[6] They make a thick cup nest attached to a fork in a tree branch.

References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Vireo flavifrons". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Jobling, James A (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 161, 402. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  3. "Vireo". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  4. "Yellow-throated Vireo Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology". www.allaboutbirds.org. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  5. Harris, Tim (2013). RSPB Migration Hotspots: The World's Best Bird Migration Sites. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 78–79. ISBN 978-1-4081-7117-2.
  6. Foster, Mercedes S. (2007). "The potential of fruiting trees to enhance converted habitats for migrating birds in southern Mexico". Bird Conservation International. 17(1): 45-61. doi:10.1017/S0959270906000554.
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