Gray Vireo
The Gray Vireo's overall gray blends with the blue-gray of the junipers. Even the bunchgrass and sagebrush have the same pale grayish color, a feature of the vegetation widespread on the arid mesas, slopes and plateaus of the West. The Gray Vireo needs this camouflage when it searches for food near the top of the low cover it prefers. The Gray Vireo is gray above, whitish below with a faint white eye ring and lores. It has a single, indistinct wing bar. The sideways twitching of its tail is unique among vireos and is reminiscent of gnatcatchers.

The Gray Vireo gleans insects from the leaves and branches of scrub oaks and other thickets. It builds a basketlike cup nest that is suspended 3 to 8 feet above the ground from the forks of twigs in a variety of low, thorny shrubs and small trees.

The Gray Vireo breeds from southern California east to Utah, south to western Texas and Baja California and winters south of the U.S.-Mexico border. It prefers dry brush, especially juniper in the pinyon-juniper covered slopes of the southwestern mountains, scrub oak and other types of chaparral.
Gray Vireo Range Map


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