110



Mr. Felix J. Koch,



shrub, as you never can in the summer, for Nature has taught the

birds the necessity of concealing their nests, and, rest assured, they

learned their lesson well. Then again, where a nest is within reach,

it may be taken out or down, examined, and this without harm to

the little ones or even the frightening away of the mother-bird

thereafter.


Infinite are the varieties of the nests of the birds of this

country. Swinging away out at the end of some limb, the oriole

builds her nest. You could’nt climb out there to get it if you tried,

nor could you reach it from below, for Madam Oriole knows many

of the cat tribe would soon get her fledgelings, if you could. The

only way to reach this deserted nest is to do as the orchid-hunters

do, climb up above and then drop a noose, manoeuvering until you

catch the end of that bough and pull it off.


Nuttall, the famous naturalist, has given much space to these

oriole’s nests in his books, interesting because hardly any of us but

have seen the little pouch swinging, back and forth and forth and

back from the very top of some deserted limb, in the winter.


It is a pendulous, cylindric pouch, of five to seven inches in

depth,” he tells us, “ usually suspended from near the extremities of

the high, drooping branches of the trees, such as the elm, the pear

or apple-tree, wild cherry, weeping willow, tulip-tree, or button-

wood. It is begun by firmly fastening natural strings of the flax,

of the swamp weed or the swamp holly-hock, or stout artificial

threads, round two or more forked twigs, corresponding to the in¬

tended width and depth of the nest. With the same materials,

willow-down or any incidental ravellings, strings, thread, sewing-

silk, tow, or wool that may be lying near the neighbouring houses

or round the rafts of trees, they interweave and fabricate a coarse

sort of cloth into the form intended ; toward the bottom of which

they place the real nest, made chiefly of lint, wiry grass, horse

and cow-hair ; lining the interior with a mixture of slender strips of

smooth vine-bark, and rarely, with a few feathers, the whole being

of a considerable thickness and more or less attached to the external

pouch,


“ Over the top, the leaves, as they grow out, form a verdant

and agreeable canopy, defending the young from the sun and rain.



