Yellow-throated Vireo

Vireo flavifrons

Order PASSERIFORMES - Family VIREONIDAE

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1. Cool Facts
2. Description
3. Similar Species
4. Sound
5. Range
6. Habitat
7. Food
8. Behavior
9. Reproduction
10. Conservation Status
11. Other Names

A bird of open deciduous forests, the Yellow-throated Vireo is the most colorful member of its family in North America.

Cool Facts

• While the Yellow-throated Vireo is associated with forest edge habitat, it actually requires large blocks of forest to breed successfully. Numbers decrease sharply in forests smaller than 100 hectares (250 acres) in the northeastern United States.
• The Yellow-throated Vireo is typically a solitary bird on migration and during the winter. It forms only loose associations with mixed-species foraging flocks. In the summer, pairs associate only long enough to raise a brood of young.

Description

• Size: 13-15 cm (5-6 in)
• Wingspan: 23 cm (9 in)
• Weight: 15-21 g (0.53-0.74 ounces)

• Small songbird.
• Olive green upperparts.
• Bright yellow throat, breast, and eye spectacles.
• Belly and under tail white.
• Two white wingbars.

• Eyes black.
• Legs dark gray.
• Bill rather thick and black, notched near tip.

Sex Differences

Sexes alike.

Immature

Similar to adult, but paler yellow below and more brownish above.

Similar Species

• No other vireo has bright yellow throat and chest.
• Pine Warbler has dusky streaking on yellow chest, white tail spots, and an eyeline, not spectacles.
• Yellow-breasted Chat lacks wingbars, has white spectacles and a longer tail.

Sound

Song a broken series of burry two- and three-syllable phrases.

»listen to songs of this species

Range

Summer Range

Breeds from very southern Canada southward to eastern Texas and northern Florida.

Winter Range

Winters from southern Mexico to northern South America. Also Bahamas and some other isolated locations in Caribbean.

Habitat

Breeds in a variety of edge habitats in mature deciduous and mixed deciduous forests.

Food

Arthropods, some fruits and seeds.

Behavior

Foraging

Forages in middle and uppers stories of forest, gleaning insects off trunks, branches and leaves. Moves slowly from place to place and searches for a relatively long time from one spot.

Reproduction

Nest Type

Nest an open cup suspended by rim from fork of small branch in tree. Made of bark strips, dry grasses, rootlets, long pine needles, leaves, or hair, held together with insect silk and spider webbing.

Egg Description

Creamy white with sparse dark spots around larger end.

Clutch Size

Usually 4 eggs. Range: 3-5.

Condition at Hatching

Helpless with tufts of down.

Conservation Status

Has disappeared from some small forest areas, but is increasing slightly rangewide.

Other Names

Viréo à gorge jaune (French)
Vireo pechiamarillo, Verdón de pecho amarillo, Vireo gargantiamarillo, Vireo gorgiamarillo (Spanish)

Sources used to construct this page:

Rodewald, P. G., and R. D. James. 1996. Yellow-throated Vireo (Vireo flavifrons). In The Birds of North America, No. 247 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.