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Blue-headed Vireo | Vireo solitarius
Brilvireo | Vireo anteojillo
The Blue-headed Vireo is a vireo with a blue-grey head and conspicuous white spectacles. It breeds in eastern and northern North America and winters in eastern and southern Mexico and northern Central America.
Voice
The song is a slow series of clear, sweet, short phrases with pauses in between. In winter mainly a harsh chatter.
Recording: Jim Berry — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm. Head blue-grey, sharply set off from the olive-green back. White lores and eye-ring form conspicuous white spectacles. Throat and breast white, flanks washed yellow and olive. Two clear white wing bars.
Confusion species
Cassin's Vireo Vireo cassinii is duller, with a greyer, less sharply contrasting head and a dingy throat. Plumbeous Vireo Vireo plumbeus is grey without a green back and without yellow on the flanks. Yellow-throated Vireo Vireo flavifrons has a bright yellow throat and yellow spectacles.
Habitat
In winter in pine-oak forest, pine forest, cloud forest and forest edges, from the foothills into the highlands, locally also in the lowlands. It forages deliberately among the foliage for insects, often in mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Winters in eastern and southern Mexico and further south through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to Nicaragua; rare in Costa Rica. Breeds outside the guide area in Canada and the eastern United States.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter most likely in mixed flocks in pine-oak forest in the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala.
Conservation status
Not threatened. A fairly common winter visitor in the north of the guide area, scarcer further south.
Scientific name
Vireo solitarius | (Wilson, 1810)
Wilson described the species in 1810 as Muscicapa solitaria; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Vireo was introduced in 1808 by Vieillot. Vireo was used by Latin authors for a small, green, migratory bird, probably the Eurasian golden oriole, though the European greenfinch has also been suggested. solitarius is Latin for 'solitary', after Wilson's impression of a retiring bird living alone in the woods. The specimen the first description was based on came from near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).