Bird Identification

Yellow-throated Vireo

Vireo flavifrons L 5 ½" (14 cm)

Illustration by Julie Zickefoose. Listen to a yellow-throated vireo.

The yellow-throated vireo is 5.5 inches long and weighs 0.63 ounces. It sports bright yellow spectacles (the combination of an eye ring and a supraloral line that contrast with the rest of the face), throat, and and breast, with two white wing bars and white underparts. The yellow-throated vireo has a “unified” look: It looks like someone took a gray above/white below bird and dunked it head first into yellow paint, leaving the wings, belly, and lower back uncolored but covering the head, throat, breast, and upper back with a rich coat of pigment

Yellow-throated vireos breed in the eastern half of the United States and can be found high in forest canopies.

Vocally, the yellow-eyed vireo follows the classic pattern of its family—short, multi-syllabic phrases repeated ad infinitum, but in a distinctly burry tone. A yellow-throated rarely sings more than three phrases before it gives one that sounds very much like, three-EIGHT.