Blue-headed Vireo
Vireo solitarius (Wilson, A, 1810)
Photo © Iain H Leach
STATUS
North America and Canada. Polytypic.
OVERVIEW
Formerly known as Solitary Vireo.
Species not admitted nationally (BOU 1971).
NOT PROVEN
0) 1876 Devon Lundy, seen, early October.
(D'Urban & Mathew, 1895; Davis & Jones, 2007).
[Not in BOU, 1971].
History D'Urban & Mathew (1892: xli-xlii) say: 'From the description sent us by the Rev. H. G. Heaven of a little bird seen by him early in October in 1876, it is probable that the island was visited by a species of Vireo ("Greenlets"), a large and widely dispersed North-American genus of small Flycatchers.
We copy the very full account given of the bird by Mr. Heaven: - "Size: about that of the Robin, perhaps slightly more robust in contour, but tail shorter in proportion. Plumage: upperparts of head, neck, back, tail, and wing-coverts uniform ashen grey with an olive-green tint in certain lights; wings and tail umber-brown, but with an ashen-grey tint on them, as though dusted with very fine powder; secondaries and tertiaries tipped with dull white, producing bars on the wings when closed; legs, beak, and eyes black, or very dark brown; the eyes a very marked feature, being very large, full, and brilliant, and set in lids fringed with an edging of the purest white, so that the eye looked like a brilliant jet bead set in a circlet of pearls; the whole of the underparts a pure spotless white, with a lustre upon it very similar to that on the breast of a Grebe, giving almost an iridescence in the sun under certain movements of the bird. I observed it in company with some Flycatchers and Whitethroats, which it much resembled at a distance, but rather exceeded in size apparently. It was very active and lively, and not at all shy, frequently coming within a few yards of where I and my sister were sitting. It was very busy catching insects, sometimes on the wing, sometimes pouncing on them on the ground, and sometimes hunting for them in the bushes, being not unlike a Tit in its restlessness and movements". As two examples of Vireo olivaceus, Vieill., the Red-eyed Vireo, have been caught near Derby (Saunders's Manual of British Birds, p. 146), there would be nothing unprecedented in another member of the genus, perhaps the Western form of the Solitary Vireo, Vireo solitarius, var. plumbeus, Allen, having paid a visit to Lundy, and it would be only another instance of North-American birds appearing in Devonshire and Cornwall.'
