Figure 361. Distribution of 48 White-eyed Vireos accepted through 2003, most of them on the southern and central coast; see also Appendix H.

 

Figure 362. California’s first White-eyed Vireo, a first-spring bird banded on 4 June 1969 on Southeast Farallon Island, can now be seen as a forerunner of many more spring vagrants in the state, most found along the southern and central coast (1980-178; Henry Robert).

 

Figure 363. Seasonal occurrence of the White-eyed Vireo in California. As with many species distributed chiefly in the Southeast, strays reach California primarily in spring. The relative difficulty of detecting a silent White-eyed Vireo, versus a singing one, undoubtedly helps to explain the paucity of fall records.

 

 

 

 

 

WHITE-EYED VIREO Vireo griseus (Boddaert, 1783)

Accepted: 48 (98%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 1	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 3	Color image: none

This species comprises three subspecies that breed in the United States as well as three more from Mexico and Bermuda. Widespread V. g. griseus—the only subspecies known to be highly migratory and hence the only likely candidate for vagrancy to California—breeds from central Iowa east through extreme southern Ontario to southern Massachusetts, and from central Texas east to Florida. These birds winter from the southern Atlantic coast and Gulf coast regions south along the Atlantic slope of Middle America to Honduras, rarely to Nicaragua. Extralimital records are scattered north to Newfoundland, northern Ontario (Wormington 1987), and Saskatchewan, east to the Azores (Alfrey 2005), and west across the United States to the Pacific coast, including single records for Washington (11 July 1981) and northern Baja California Sur (24 September 2002; NAB 57: 121). Southerly vagrants have reached Panama and the Islas Revillagigedo.

California’s first White-eyed Vireo was a first-spring bird measured and photographed 4–5 June 1969 on Southeast Farallon Island (Robert 1971b; Figure 362). The species has since proven to be a casual and sporadic visitor to the state, especially the southern two-thirds, which claim all but two records, most of them along the coast (Figure 361; but see also Appendix H). As Figure 363 shows, spring vagrants (6 May–30 June) have furnished four out of every five records (38 of 48). Five records involve birds that probably or definitely oversummered, including one of a male that defended a territory in Goleta, Santa Barbara County, from 18 May to 14 September 1982. The other four summer records involve birds documented for much shorter periods between 5 July and 2 September. Only five fall vagrants (30 September–30 October) have been found.

A quarter of the state’s records (12 of 48) occurred during the unique 1992 influx of southeastern vagrants to California (Terrill et al. 1992, Patten and Marantz 1996). Three-fourths of the state’s spring/summer records refer to singing males, which suggests that silent White-eyed Vireos can be easily overlooked. Only males sing on the breeding grounds but both sexes reportedly produce primary song on the wintering grounds (Hopp et al. 1995).