Yellow-throated Vireo

Overview

Yellow-throated Vireo: Large vireo, olive-gray upperparts, gray rump. Throat and breast are bright yellow, belly is white. Eyes are dark. Spectacles are yellow. Wings are dark with two white bars. Legs and feet are black. It is the most colorful member of its family in North America.

Range and Habitat

Yellow-throated Vireo: Breeds from Manitoba, Minnesota, Ontario, and central New England south to Gulf Coast states. Spends winters in tropics, with a few in southern Florida. Inhabits live oak hammocks, mature pine forests, or mixed turkey oak and pine woodlands. Also occurs in cypress swamps or mixed forests along rivers. Sometimes found in residential areas with mature trees.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Yellow-throated Vireo was first described in 1808 by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot, a French ornithologist.
It requires large blocks of forest to breed successfully. Numbers decrease sharply in forests smaller than 250 acres in the northeastern United States.
Their numbers have decreased in recent years because of the spraying of trees with toxic chemicals.
A group of vireos are collectively known as a "call" of vireos.

The Yellow-throated Vireo has a very large range reaching up to around 3.2 million square kilometers. This bird can be found throughout the Caribbean, North America and Central America including Belize, Canada, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and the United States among others. It also has a vagrant populations in Ireland and the UK. This species appears in forested areas and plantations. The global population of this bird is estimated to be around 1.4 million individual birds. Currently, it is not believed that the population trends for this species will soon approach the minimum levels that could suggest a potential decline in population. Due to this, population trends for the Yellow-throated Vireo have a present evaluation level of Least Concern.