Just going back through some photos from mid-October, I found this little guy in the banyan in our front yard, spotted around noon on October 13th, and I thought it might be a new bird for me.

I googled and guessed a vireo, maybe a Red-eyed Vireo, and posted to What’s This Bird for confirmation.

Confirmed!

A tireless songster, the Red-eyed Vireo is one of the most common summer residents of Eastern forests. These neat, olive-green and white songbirds have a crisp head pattern of gray, black, and white. Their brief but incessant songs—sometimes more than 20,000 per day by a single male—contribute to the characteristic sound of an Eastern forest in summer. When fall arrives, they head for the Amazon basin, fueled by a summer of plucking caterpillars from leaves in the treetops.

And…

The red iris that gives the Red-eyed Vireo its name doesn’t develop until the end of the birds’ first winter. Then the brown iris the birds were born with becomes dull brick red to bright crimson in different individuals.

Blogged bird number 193!