Plumbeous Vireo

About the Plumbeous Vireo

The plumbeous vireo (Vireo plumbeus) is a small North American songbird in the family Vireonidae, the vireos, greenlets, and shrike-babblers. It is found from the U. S. states of Montana and South Dakota south to Honduras.

The plumbeous vireo was originally described in 1866 as Vireo plumbeous, its present binomial. Until the late 1990s it and what are now Cassin's vireo (V. cassinii) and the blue-headed vireo (V. solitarius) were treated as a single species, the "solitary vireo" (V. solitarius sensu lato). Earlier studies had suggested the split based on morphology, plumage, and vocalizations, and molecular genetic studies published in the early 1990s confirmed differences among the three. They form a superspecies.

The plumbeous vireo has these four subspecies: V. p. plumbeus Coues, 1866 V. p. gravis Phillips, AR, 1991 V. p. notius Van Tyne, 1933 V. p. montanus Van Rossem, 1933 Several other subspecies have been named but have not been confirmed as separate from any of these four. There is some doubt about whether V. plumbeous represents one or two species, and the Clements taxonomy separates them within the species as the "plumbeous" (V. p. plumbeus... Wikipedia →