174 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



ORCHARD ORIOLE 



A. O. U. No. 506. (Icterus sparias) 



RANGE. 



United States chiefly east of the Great Plains, breeding throughout 

 its United State ränge and north to southern Massachusetts and Min- 

 nesota. Winters in central and northern South America. 



NEST AND EGGS. 



The nests of this species vary vastly in constructionand in the method 

 of attaching them to their supports in different sections of the country. 

 They are usually quite bulky structures, never as deep or as pensile as 

 those of the Baltimore Oriole; they are made of long pieces of grass 

 very skillfully woven together so as to form a hemispherical basket. 

 As maybe inferred from their names they frequent and nest most often 

 in orchards either placing their nests in forks of the apple trees or sus- 

 pending them from the rims. Their four to six eggs are bluish white, 

 specked, scrawled and blotched with brown and lilac, usually showing 

 but little of the lining common to the other species of Orioles. 



HABITS 



These handsome Orioles are very abundant in the southern and middle 

 portions of the United States, in many localities greatly outnumbering 

 the Baltimore Oriole, the distribution of which is rather more northerly 

 than the present variety. 



They are a great deal more active than the Baltimore Oriole and 

 seem to be of a more nervous temperament for they are rarely still 

 more than a few seconds at a time, being continually searching among 

 the leaves or dashing out into the air after passing insects, stopping 

 now and then to give voice to the loud and melodious whistling warble. 



Their song is very different from that of the Baltimore Oriole and is 

 usually longer, louder and more varied but is sometimes intermingled 

 with spontaneous outbursts of stränge sounds similar to the song of 

 the Yellow-breasted Chat. 



Most of these Orioles spend the winter in northern South America 

 and in the spring migrate northwards, reaching the southern border of 

 the United States the middle of April and the northern limits of their 

 breeding ränge about the middle of May. They are very abundant 

 breeding birds in the south and especially so in Texas, but in the 



