BALTIMORE ORIOLE 249 



over again, he moved up and down with a sharp jerk, rather than in an easy 

 sweeping motion, and he made a very short pause each time before changing 

 direction. 



This is a very simple motion, one may say — just an exaggerated bowing — 

 not very different from the bowing, nodding, or swaying of many birds in the 

 excitement of their courting displays. True enough, and it is not until we look at 

 the action from the point of vantage of the female bird and see in our mind's 

 eye, as nearly as we can, just what she sees, that we understand its significance. 



In the first position noted above, the orange of the breast glows before her, and 

 so near her that it fills a wide arc with blazing color. Then, as the male bird 

 bends swiftly forward, and the head comes down, the orange is blotted out by 

 black, as by a camera shutter, and immediately, as the bird continues to bend 

 forward, out flashes the orange color again, now on the rump. Witnessed at 

 close quarters, the appearance of this maneuver must be as the bursting out of 

 a great sheet of flame, its instantaneous extinction into darkness, a flaring up 

 again — then darkness once more. 



Nesting. — In constructing its nest, a woven, hanging pouch, the 

 oriole is perhaps the most skilful artisan of any North American bird. 

 In southern New England we think of the little cradle as hanging most 

 often high in the air near the end of a long drooping branch of an 

 elm tree, where it swings and tosses in the wind, but the bird often 

 builds here in poplars, maples, and even in the apple and pear trees of 

 our orchards, where it is anchored to a more stable branch. 



Speaking of nests in Hatley, Quebec, Henry Mousley (1916) states: 

 "The usual nesting site selected here is near the top of some fair 

 sized tree, generally a maple." Knight (1908) reports that in Maine, 

 although the elm is the oriole's favorite tree, "occasionally nests are 

 placed in maples, locust, cottonwood, poplar or other hard wood 

 trees." Eaton (1914) writing of New York State, says: "I have 

 found this oriole's nest hanging from Norway spruce, hemlock, and 

 horsechestnut which one would naturally expect he never would 

 select. In different villages of western New York the preference seems 

 to be in this order: white elm, silver maple, sugar maple, and apple." 

 Farther west, in Minnesota, Edmonde S. Currier (1904) remarks: 

 "Common about the lake [Leech Lake]. * * * All the nests seen 

 were in birch trees." A. D. DuBois (MS.) speaks of a nest in Illinois 

 "in an oak tree, hung in a cluster of leaves at the topmost end of a 

 branch, hidden so effectively that I should not have discovered it if 

 I had not seen the male fly to it and chase away sparrows and other 

 birds." M. G. Vaiden (MS.), in a letter from Mississippi, mentions 

 pecans, sycamores, and elms as nesting sites, and includes this interest- 

 ing record: "In my yard the pecan trees grow to a height of 50 to 75 

 feet, some of them even higher. Virginia creeper vines run up the 

 trunk and out on most of the limbs. On May 22, a Baltimore oriole 

 selected as a nesting site a limb of a tree which had fallen off, pulling 

 the creeper with it and was hanging suspended in the air, the nest 



