Saturday Sightings- Red-eyed Vireo

Happy Saturday Everyone! 

This bird lives in open wooded areas across Canada and the eastern and northwestern USA.  A migratory bird, they spend their winters in South America, but can be as far north as Central America.  They eat insects, caterpillars and aphids, their favourites, and pick these from the foliage of the trees, sometimes hovering while they forage.   They also eat berries with Tamanqueiro and Gumbo-limbo being two popular types in the trees where they winter, and instead of hovering to get their fruit, the red-eyed vireo will hang upside down on branches to reach for them.  In some tropical regions, these birds are often seen in mixed-species feeding flocks, moving in the bulk of the flock higher up in the trees.  This birds nest is a cup-shape held in the fork of a tree branch and is unfortunately also a species that suffers from nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird. 

Fun fact:  The red-eyed vireo sings for long periods of time.  It holds the record for most songs given in a single day among bird species, with more than 20 000 songs in one day.

Have a great rest of your weekend!