Natural Highlights: Red-eyed Vireo

The Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus) sounds a bit like an American Robin, with longer pauses between phrases.  A champion songster, this bird seems to sing all day, every day, from spring to late summer, before migrating to the Amazon River basin to spend the winter.  It's a mostly olive green and white bird, with a white eyebrow bordered by black stripes, and a distinctive small hook at the end of its beak.  The eyes of adults are indeed red, but they nearly always appear black from a distance.  Red-eyed Vireos are prodigious consumers of caterpillars in the spring when they are raising their young (and, often, the young of the parasitic Brown-headed Cowbird), but they also eat many other kinds of insects and invertebrates, and lots of wild fruits as well.  All of our Midsouth vireos, the Red-eyed, the White-eyed, and the Yellow-throated, depend on healthy, diverse forest habitat for successful breeding, and thus on the conservation efforts of individuals, governments, and organizations like the Wolf River Conservancy.

Video of Singing Red-eyed Vireo:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-eyed_Vireo/sounds

More information on the Red-eyed Vireo:  https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/red-eyed-vireo