206 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



"Although my few Costa Rican records of the orchard oriole are all 

 of single individuals, in northern Central America, where the species 

 is far more abundant, it is more sociable during the winter months, 

 wandering in straggling flocks through the riverside trees, the planta- 

 tions and shady pastures, but rarely entering heavy forest. In the 

 banana plantations, these oriole hang head downward beside the huge, 

 red flower buds and push their sharp bills into the long, white, tubular 

 blossoms to sip the abundant nectar. In the pasture lands they strag- 

 gle along the fence lines, where living trees of the madre de cacao form 

 the posts, and investigate the pink, pealike blossoms which in Feb- 

 ruary or March cover the long, leafless branches. The single orchard 

 oriole that in four years I have seen on my farm in southern Costa 

 Rica was visiting the madre de cacao blossoms in a hedgerow. When 

 they find groves of introduced eucalyptus trees, the orioles probe the 

 clusters of long white stamens, either for nectar or for the small insects 

 attracted to the flowers. 



"I have twice found the roosts of wintering orchard orioles. They 

 seem to prefer stands of tall grass of one sort or another. In the 

 Lancetilla Valley, on the northern coast of Honduras, many roosted 

 nightly in a patch of introduced elephant grass, Pennisetum purpureum, 

 which formed an impenetrable thicket 6 or 8 feet high. They went early 

 to roost, sometimes retiring an hour before nightfall. By the time the 

 crowds of small resident finches joined them there, they were com- 

 pletely hidden from view amid the tall grass, whence would issue a few 

 snatches of their breezy song, audible above the chatter of the garrulous 

 seedeaters. Here the orchard orioles slept with seven other species of 

 birds, both resident and migratory, including a few Baltimore orioles, 

 as told in the section devoted to that species. I found the orchard 

 orioles roosting in this patch of grass in September and October, and 

 again in February of the following year. In March 1932, a small flock 

 roosted in a dense stand of young giant canes, Gynerium sagittatum, 

 that were colonizing a sandy flat left by a shift in the channel of the 

 Rio MorjtL, a small tributary of the Motagua in Guatemala. The 

 canes, still only 10 feet or less in height, had attained only a fraction 

 of their full stature, and resembled some tall, coarse grass, like the 

 elephant grass in which I had found the orioles roosting in an earlier 

 year, rather than a mature stand of Gynerium. 



"I have heard no other winter visitant sing so much during its so- 

 journ in Central America as the orchard oriole. Upon arriving in 

 Honduras and Guatemala in August, the males often delivered frag- 

 ments of hurried, whistled song. In September their songs came more 

 rarely ; but toward the end of October, more than two months after the 

 arrival of the first-comers, I still occasionally overheard them deliver 

 brief, subdued refrains. From October to March they were practically 



