BALTIMORE ORIOLE 253 



A. C. Bent showed me a nest hanging, as plain as a rag on a clothes- 

 line, on one of the elm trees in his garden. "Last summer," he said, 

 "that nest was completely hidden in the dense foliage at the end of 

 that long, pendant limb; I could not see it from any angle, although I 

 often tried and knew just where it was. All the other nests I have 

 located have been visible, from some angle at least." 



It is the bird's custom to build a new nest each year. This habit is 

 evidenced by the remains of former nests, in varying degrees of 

 dilapidation, which sometimes hang in the same tree. An apparent 

 exception to this rule is reported by George F. Tatum (1915) who tells 

 of a female Baltimore oriole repairing a last year's nest. He concludes 

 "that the old nest had been reconstructed, the only evidence of the 

 former one being the black (old) fiber now interwoven with a little of 

 the light (new) fiber, which bound the edge of the nest to the branch." 



When we consider the sequence of steps taken in the construction 

 of the oriole's nest, as outlined by Herrick, and recall the propensity 

 of birds to follow a cycle in their behavior, one act following another 

 in orderly succession throughout the year, we can conceive that it may 

 be more in accordance with the bud's nature to progress straight 

 through the making of a new nest from beginning to end, rather than 

 to patch up an old nest in ill repair. 



Eggs. — Bendire (1895) writes: 



From four to six eggs are laid to a set, most frequently four, though sets of five 

 are not uncommon, while sets of six are rather rare. One is deposited daily, and 

 only one brood is raised in a season. * * * 



The ground color is ordinarily pale grayish white, one of those subtle tints which 

 is difficult to describe; in a few cases it is pale bluish white, and less often the 

 ground color is clouded over in places with a faint, pale ferruginous suffusion. 

 The egg is streaked, blotched, and covered with irregularly shaped lines and 

 tracings, generally heaviest about the larger end of the egg, with different shades 

 of black and brown, and more sparingly with lighter tints of smoke, lavender, and 

 pearl gray. In a few instances the markings form an irregular wreath, and oc- 

 casionally a set is found entirely unmarked. 



The average measurement of 56 eggs in the United States National Museum 

 collection is 23.03 by 15.45 millimetres, or about 0.91 by 0.61 inch. The largest 

 egg of the series measures 25.91 by 16.76 millimetres, or 1.02 by 0.66 inches; the 

 smallest, 20.83 by 14.99 millimetres, or 0.82 by 0.59 inch. 



Young. — The nestling orioles are comparatively safe for the first 

 2 weeks, or thereabouts, of their lives, during the time they remain 

 concealed in their little, woven pocket well above the ground at the 

 end of a slender branchlet. Young orioles seem very quiet as nestlings; 

 at all events we do not hear their voices until just before they leave 

 the nest. At this time, near the summer solstice in southern New 

 England, they begin their characteristic cry. On a certain day, over 

 a whole township we hear it, over and over all day long, and for a week 

 or more it continues hour after hour, a monotonous series of five or six 



