Puerto Rican Vireos: Puerto Rico Five-One Water Quality Icons

Summary: Puerto Rican vireos as arguable Puerto Rico Five-One water quality icons attest to clean waters in wooded wetlands and avoid adulterated watersheds.

Puerto Rican vireo (Vireo latimeri), known locally as bien-te-veo; Aibonito, central south Puerto Rico; photo by Dylan Ávila (Tierra Viva): Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe, via Facebook Sept. 26, 2015

Puerto Rican vireos are appealing as national water quality month August 2019 and Puerto Rico Five-One statehood icons as they abound in clear, riparian wooded habitat niches and never access adulterated watersheds.

National water quality month August 2019 in the United States brings in Puerto Rico because of the Commonwealth being one of 16 Caribbean and Pacific possessions. The second voyage of Christopher Columbus (Oct. 31, 1451-May 20, 1506) to the New World claimed Borinquén ("Land of Brave People") Nov. 19, 1493, for Spain. The Treaty of Paris Dec. 10, 1898, delivered Puerto Rico from Spain, defeated in the Spanish-American War (April 21, 1898-Aug. 13, 1898), to the United States.

Puerto Ricans enjoy United States citizenship by the Jones-Shafroth Act March 2, 1917, and, if the proposed Puerto Rico Admission Act ends up law, Five-One statehood.

The months between April and August fit into four- to five-year life cycles of Puerto Rican vireos as annual breeding and parenting seasons within dense foliage.

Puerto Rican vireo mothers-to-be gestate one two- to three-egg seasonal brood whose suspended nests they generate within nine-plus days and that sometimes get shiny cowbird eggs. Cup-like nests hang at 7- to 10-plus-foot (2.13- to 3.05-meter) heights by upper rims held onto branch forks within dense foliage by fiber-, hair-, web-bound twigs. Spider silk integrates into respectively gray-green, brown-gray frameworks area grasses and host-tree twig from Puerto Rican vireo couples' 1.63- to 2.62-acre (0.66- to 1.06-plus-hectare) nesting territories.

The Puerto Rico Five-One water quality icons juggle brown-speckled, brown-spotted ink-white eggs within fine-, grass-lined interiors to breeze-resistant frameworks whose exteriors jumble mosses and spider-egg sacs.

Puerto Rican vireo mothers-to-be keep their non-glossy, smooth eggs incubated for 14 to 16 days and their two to three hatchlings in birth nests 12-plus days.

Puerto Rican vireos look like helpless hatchlings with yellow bills, jaw-edged gape flanges, mouths, legs, feet and skin and sighted four- to five-day-olds with brown-gray-white down. The Passeriformes (from Latin passer, "sparrow" and -formis, "shaped") order juvenile member manifests brown upperparts, brown-gray wings with two buff bands and white-yellow underparts and undertails. Vireo latimeri (from Latin vireō, "greenfinch," for George C. Latimer, United States Consulate to Puerto Rico, 1846-1953) nets gray-white patches above big eyes with brown-red irises.

The Puerto Rico Five-One water quality icons, observed by Spencer Baird (Feb. 3, 1823-Aug. 19, 1887), obtain brown-white bills and brown-gray crowns, necks, rumps and tails.

Physically and sexually mature Puerto Rican vireos present gray-white chins, throats and breasts; blue-gray limbs; olive-brown backs; olive-edged brown-gray tail and wing feathers; and yellow underparts.

Gleaning, sallying Puerto Rican vireos quest beetles, caterpillars, crickets, flies, grasshoppers, moths and worms and seeds and wild berries through 2,952.76-foot (900-meter) altitudes above sea level. They realize 0.36- to 0.53-ounce (10.1- to 14.9-gram), 11- to 12-inch (4.33- to 4.72-centimeter) beak-tail lengths within their total 3,050.21-square-mile (7,900-square-kilometer) brushy, forested, scrubby territorial range. They sound hoarse mew calls; melodious bien-te-veo songs; scolding chur-chur-churr rattles; and soft tup-tup-tup contact calls in shaded coffee plantations, shrublands, Torrecilla-Piñones mangrove forest and woodlands.

Puerto Rico Five-One water quality icons, tagged locally bien-te-veo (Puerto Rican tanagers, literally, "I see you well"), treat ecotourists to melodic songs within clean wooded watersheds.

Puerto Rico's endemic bien-te-veo (Puerto Rican vireo; Vireo latimeri) in Monte Choca State Forest (Bosque Estatal de Monte Choca), Corozal, central eastern Puerto Rico; photo by Pedro William Santan: Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe, via Facebook July 4, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Puerto Rican vireo (Vireo latimeri), known locally as bien-te-veo; Aibonito, central south Puerto Rico; photo by Dylan Ávila (Tierra Viva): Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe, via Facebook Sept. 26, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/avesdepuertoricoFelPe/photos/a.10154144170085190/10154475711690190/

Puerto Rico's endemic bien-te-veo (Puerto Rican vireo; Vireo latimeri) in Monte Choca State Forest (Bosque Estatal de Monte Choca), Corozal, central eastern Puerto Rico; photo by Pedro William Santan: Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe, via Facebook July 4, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/avesdepuertoricoFelPe/photos/a.10154215341530190/10154295504665190/

For further information:

Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe. 4 July 2015. "Added a new photo to the album: Aves de mi tierra: Pedro William Santana. Bienteveo (Virei latimeri) Puerto Rican Vireo Ayer en Monte Choca en Corozal." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/avesdepuertoricoFelPe/photos/a.10154215341530190/10154295504665190/

Aves de Puerto Rico @avesdepuertoricoFelPe. 26 September 2015. "Added a new photo to the album: Aves: Dylan Ávila (Tierra Viva) -- in Puerto Rico. Bienteveo (endémica) Puerto Rican Vireo Vireo latimeri Aibonito, P.R." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/avesdepuertoricoFelPe/photos/a.10154144170085190/10154475711690190/

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