Bell's Vireo

About the Bell's Vireo

Plain to look at and nearly impossible to see, the Bell's Vireo makes up for it by singing constantly - a fast, scratchy question-and-answer phrase, cheedle-cheedle-chee? cheedle-cheedle-chew!, pouring from deep inside a thicket. Birders joke that the bird asks the question and answers it himself.

It is a small, drab vireo - gray-green above, whitish below, with a faint spectacle around the eye - and it lives its whole life inside dense low scrub: mesquite, sumac, and the brushy tangles along Hill Country creeks. Central Texas is a stronghold, with birds arriving in late March and singing into September.

The species carries conservation weight. Its endangered western race, the Least Bell's Vireo of California, was pushed to the brink by habitat loss and cowbird parasitism, and the recovery effort there made the whole species a symbol of what streamside brush is worth. Our Texas birds face the same cowbird pressure and shrug off more of it.

Seeing one takes strategy: find the song, wait at the thicket's sunny edge, and let the bird's own restlessness bring it to the surface for a few seconds an hour. The photograph is earned.