BALTIMORE ORIOLE 261 



the saplings were large enough to offer suitable branches for the 

 suspension of their nests, the orioles learned to build them attached 

 to small limbs close up to the main stem of the tree. On several 

 occasions I have found them within 8 feet of the ground." 



Voice. — The song of the Baltimore oriole possesses little pure 

 beauty but it stands out prominently in the spring chorus. We are 

 not attracted to the song as we are to the rose-breasted grosbeak's 

 by syrupy sweetness, nor by the robin's cheerfulness, the wood 

 pewee's artistry, or by the red-eyed vireo's almost endless singing, but 

 by its vigor — a sort of robust manliness. Another feature of the song 

 which attracts our interest is its infinite variety: no two orioles, we 

 say, sing the same tune, but each bird, in the main, sticks to his own 

 theme. It is one of the songs which, if you note it down, you must 

 punctuate at the end with a period; the bird has said his say and 

 stops; he has finished, for the moment anyway. The song clearly 

 corresponds to a short sentence of half a dozen syllables or so. A 

 point of difference between it and the songs which resemble it some- 

 what is that many of its single notes, often most of them, are inflected 

 sharply downwards, as the pitch of our voice falls in pronouncing the 

 word "yolk." We notice the same peculiarity in the loud, vibrant 

 call of the evening grosbeak. 



In the simplest form the song consists of a short series of notes on 

 the same pitch, like blasts from a tiny trumpet, or there may be but 

 a single blast, scarcely a song. The longer songs, with their changes 

 in pitch and short pauses between the notes, often form rather pretty 

 phrases, although somewhat jerky because the notes are not run 

 together smoothly. These songs give the impression of exclamations. 



Francis H. Allen (MS.) speaks of "a beautiful and unusual song, a 

 low, sotto voce warbling, interspersed with snatches of the character- 

 istic chattering note," and of another, "an uncommonly pretty song, 

 containing a trill near the end, a full-voiced song, not the low warble 

 we sometimes hear, but longer than the song usually is." 



Aretas A. Saunders (MS.) sends to A. C. Bent the following analysis: 

 "The song of the Baltimore oriole is loud, clear and of flutelike quality. 

 It consists of a series of short notes and 2-note phrases, with short 

 pauses between them, and commonly a somewhat longer pause 

 somewhere in the middle of the song. It is so exceedingly variable 

 in form that one cannot pick out any one song, or even several songs, 

 that could be said to be more typical of the species than others. The 

 number of notes in a song varies, according to my 102 records, from 

 4 to 19, but as only 1 record has 19 and no others more than 16; the 

 19-note one is quite unusual. The average song is about 8 notes long. 

 It is a common habit of the bird, however, to sing single notes or short 



