SCOTT'S ORIOLE 239 



ICTERUS PARISORUM Bonaparte 



Scott's Oriole 



Plates 16 and 17 

 HABITS 



The adult male Scott's oriole is a handsome bird in its striking color 

 pattern of clear black and deep lemon yellow, but we miss the rich 

 orange colors of some of the other beautiful orioles. In the dull- 

 colored semidesert areas in which it largely spends the summer, how- 

 ever, it is one of the most attractive birds that we meet on the dry 

 yucca plains; and not the least of its attractions is its rich melodius 

 song, which greets us almost constantly during the nesting season. 



It breeds over a wide range, from the interior of southern California, 

 central-western Nevada, southwestern Utah, central-eastern New 

 Mexico, and central-western Texas southward to the tip of Baja 

 California and to Michoacan, Hidalgo, and Veracruz, in Mexico. 



Scott's oriole has been called the mountain oriole, and again it has 

 been referred to as a desert bird; as a matter of fact it is not strictly 

 either, for it occupies a more or less intermediate zone, or zones, such 

 as the pinyon-juniper belt in the foothills, the desert slopes of the 

 mountains, or the more elevated, semiarid plains between the mountain 

 ranges, where the yuccas are widely scattered; but it seems to avoid 

 the real desert, where the chollas and other cacti grow profusely. 

 Ralph Hoffman (1927) says: "The bird often ranges among the juni- 

 pers and pinyon pines that mingle with the tree yucca in the stony 

 canyons along the edge of the desert, and in the Washington palms 

 along the western edge of the Colorado Desert." 



W. E. D. Scott (1885) describes an interesting canyon resort of 

 Scott's oriole as follows: 



There is a canon that begins high up in the Santa Catalinas, and, dividing the 

 hills and table lands on either side of it by its deep furrow, it extends for two miles 

 or more, where it joins the valley of the San Pedro River. It is the upper and 

 more elevated part of this cation with which we have to do, at an altitude varying 

 from four thousand to five thousand feet. The hills on either side are high, the 

 canon generally quite narrow. Live oaks are the trees of the hills and hillsides, 

 and reach in places to the bed of the canon. Here in parts are groves of cotton- 

 woods and sycamores, and some cedars, and, with the exception of the very bed 

 of the cafion, where for a part of the year is a brook, the grass covers the surface 

 of the ground. The brook begins to dry up in its exposed parts early in May, 

 but all summer long there is running water for at least a mile in the Cottonwood 

 grove, and in a number of places, even during the driest part of the year, the water 

 rises to the surface, making "tanks," as they are called. Along this running water 

 and about the "tanks," bird life is very abundant, and here, surely no desert, is the 

 summer home of many Scott's Orioles. There is very little cactus, and none of 



