Small songbird with thick bill, large head, and short neck. Upperparts grayish overall with little to no contrast between head and back. Note bold white "spectacles."
Small songbird with thick bill and slow, deliberate foraging style. Fairly uniform grayish upperparts with white underparts; flanks sometimes washed with grayish or yellowish. Two white wingbars.
Like other vireos, bill is thicker than a warbler's with a slight hook at the tip. Uniform grayish above with white "spectacles" and wingbars; white below.
Typically forages in small twigs with slow and deliberate pace.
Typically breeds in mountain forests above 3,500 feet elevation, particularly in ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper. Also uses woodlands along streams including cottonwoods, box elder, and willows, as well as pine-oak forests and oak scrub.
A small, sturdy songbird with a fairly thick, short, and slightly hooked bill.
Larger than a Red-breasted Nuthatch, smaller than a Red-eyed Vireo.
sparrow-sized or smallerOrnithologists recognize at least four subspecies, but only one of these, the migratory subspecies plumbeus, occurs in the United States. The others are the larger gravis of Puebla and Veracruz, Mexico; the slightly smaller notius of Belize; and the more colorful montanus of southern Mexico south to Honduras, which looks more like a Cassin’s Vireo than other Plumbeous subspecies. The southern three subspecies are nonmigratory.
Vireos, Shrike-Babblers, and Erpornis(Order: Passeriformes, Family: Vireonidae)
Need Bird ID Help? Try Merlin
The Cornell Lab will send you updates about birds,
birding, and opportunities to help bird conservation.
