418 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
for green vegetables, though I have had the entire floral 
output of an old trumpet-vine riddled bud and blossom; 
and I have often stood and scolded them from under the 
boughs of a Spitzenburgh apple tree, amid the blossoms of 
which they were rummaging, — perhaps for insects, but also 
scattering the rosy blossoms right and left with torn and 
bruised petals. Powell, in The Independent, writes feel- 
ingly of this trait of the Oriole, thus: — 
“¢ An Oriole is like a golden shuttle in the foliage of the 
trees, but he is the incarnation of mischief. That is just 
the word for it. If there is anything possible to be de- 
stroyed, the Oriole likes to tear it up. 
“« He wastes a lot of string in building his nest. He is 
pulling off apple blossoms now, possibly eating a few 
petals. By and by he will pick holes in bushels of grapes, 
and in plum season he will let the wasps and hornets into 
the heart of every Golden Abundance plum on your 
favourite tree. ... Yet the saucy scamp is so beautiful 
that he is tolerated — and he does kill an enormous lot 
of insects. There is a swinging nest just over there above 
the blackberry bushes. It is wonderfully woven and is a 
cradle as well as a house. I should like to have been 
brought up in such a homestead.’ 
“It seems as if the Oriole must be a descendant of one 
of the brilliant birds that inhabited North America in 
by-gone days of tropic heat and that has stayed on 
from a matter of hereditary association; for in the 
nesting season it is to be found from Florida and 
Texas up to New Brunswick and the Saskatchewan 
country and westward to the Rockies, beyond which this 
type is replaced by Bullock’s Oriole, of much similar 
