Plate 30 – Vigors Vireo

John James Audubon drew the Vigors Vireo in 1812. It is among the earliest drawings in Birds of America. Audubon named the bird after Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1785-1840). Vigors was a co-founder of the Zoological Society of London and was especially known for identifying and documenting birds. Vigors developed the quinarian system for the classification of birds which was rendered almost completely irrelevant by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and the theory of evolution. The Vigors Vireo turned out to be as short lived as the quinarian system. As the bird started to resemble too closely a female Pine warbler (see Plate 140), it is most likely that Audubon decided to drop the Vigors Vireo from the later octavo edition of Birds of America for the bird never to be seen again