200 NORTU AMERICAN BIRDS. 



tlie loth of May, and were very common among the low oaks of that region. 

 He speaks of its song as very pleasant, and especially melodious early in the 

 morning, when the bird is generally perclied on the sunny side or top of 

 an oak. 



At I'uget Sound, according to Dr. Cooper, these birds do not arrive until 

 the beginning of June, and are at no time very common tiiere. He describes 

 their habits as similar to those of the spui-ius, they being shy and difficult to 

 discover among the foliage. Their song is more like that of the Baltimore, 

 loud, clear, and varied. 



In his lleport on the birds of California, Dr. Cooper states that these birds 

 arrive at San Diego, from the south, about March 1 ; but at Fort Mohave, one 

 hundred and sixty miles farther north, he saw none until a month later. 

 Like the Baltimore Oriole, tliey resort to the open roads, gardens, and 

 orchards, putting tliemselves under the protection of man, and repaying him 

 both by their sweet melody and their usefulness in destroying insects. They 

 keep chiefly in the trees and rarely descend to the ground, e-xcejit to collect 

 materials for their nests. These are suspended from the end of a branch, 

 and are constructed of fibrous grasses, horse-hairs, strings, bits of rags, wool, 

 hempen fibres of plants, etc. At times only a single material is used, such 

 as horse-hair. These nests ai-e neatly and closely interwoven in the form of 

 a deep bag or purse, and are suspended by the edges from the forks of a 

 branch, near its end. They have usually a depth of about four or five 

 inches, and a diameter of about three or three and a half In most cases 

 they are largely made of the flaxen fibres of wild hempen plants, and by 

 strings of this are firmly bound around the ends of the twigs to which 

 they are suspended. They are lined witiiin with fine, soft vegetable down. 

 In some nests tlie inner bark of the silkweed largely predominates. 



Dr. Cooper states that the eggs of Bullock's Oriole are, in number, irom 

 four to six. He describes them as bluish-white, with scattered, winding 

 streaks and hair-lines of black and reddish-brown near the larger end, 

 measuring .98 by .60 of an inch. In the southern half of California they 

 are laid in the first or second week of May. At Santa Cruz, in 1866, he did 

 not observe any of this species until April 3. 



Mr. Allen did not meet with this species in Western Kansas, and it is not 

 included in his list of birds observed by him near Fort Hays. At Ogden 

 and Salt Lake City, in LTtah, which he reached the first of September, ISul- 

 lock's Oriole had already migrated southward. 



In all the fertile portions of the country west of the plains, ^Mr. Bidgway 

 found Bullock's Oriole — the western representative of the Baltimore — ex- 

 tremely abundant. In Jlay, when tlie valley of the Truckee, near Pyramid 

 Lake, was vi.sited, he observed great numbers feeding upon the buds of the 

 grease-wood, in company with the Louisiana Tanager and the Black-headed 

 Grosbeaks. In certain localities there was scarcely a tree that did not con- 

 tain one or more nests of these birds, and as many as five have been found in 



