First of the Vireos to return in Spring, last to leave its northern haunts in Autumn. They are among the most confiding and unsuspicious of the family and I frequently have approached within a few feet of an individual while it hunted, soliloquizing in definite, rather concise, notes between captured insects.
One or two pairs have nested in Chickadee Valley every year of the past twenty altho I was not always aware of the home location until leaves had fallen and revealed the nest — perhaps within fifty feet of our house! Often I sat on a convenient rock close to one pair's nest and smoked a sociable pipe while the grayheaded little birds looked and talked me over in an intimate quizzical manner — one on the nest, the other nearby. Not a hint of anxiety from either: it was good to feel I was accepted as one of them. No human accolade could equal that honor.
Eastern North America from Cape Breton Island thru southern British Provinces to northern North Dakota, south to Gulf States and Texas.