200 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



the 15th of May, and were very common among- the low oaks of that region. 

 He speaks of its song as very pleasant, and especially melodious early in the 

 morning, when the bird is generally perched on the snnny side or top of 

 an oak. 



At Paget Sound, according to Dr. Cooper, these birds do not arrive until 

 the beginning of June, and are at no time very conunon there. He describes 

 their habits as similar to those of the spurius, they being shy and difficult to 

 discover among the foliage. Their song is more like that of tlie Baltimore, 

 loud, clear, and varied. 



In liis lieport on the birds of California, Dr. Cooper states that these birds 

 arrive at San Diego, from the south, about March 1 ; but at Fort Mohave, one 

 hundred and sixty miles farther north, he saw none until a month later. 

 Like the Baltimore Oriole, tliey resort to the open roads, gardens, and 

 orchards, putting tliemselves under the protection of man, and repaying him 

 both by their sweet melody and their usefulness in destroying insects. They 

 keep chiefly in the trees and rarely descend to the ground, except to collect 

 materials for their nests. These are suspended from tlie end of a branch, 

 and are constructed of fibrous grasses, horse-hairs, strings, bits of rags, wool, 

 hempen fibres of plants, etc. At times only a single material is used, such 

 as horse-hair. These nests are neatly and closely interwoven in the form of 

 a deep bag or purse, and are suspended by the edges from the forks of a 

 branch, near its end. They have usually a depth of about four or five 

 inches, and a diameter of about three or three and a half In most cases 

 they are largely made of the flaxen fibres of wild hempen plants, and by 

 strings of this are firmly bound around the ends of the twigs to which 

 they are suspended. They are lined within with fine, soft vegetable down. 

 In some nests the inner bark of the silkweed largely predominates. 



Dr. Cooper states that the eggs of Bullock's Oriole are, in number, from 

 four to six. He describes them as bluish-white, with scattered, winding 

 streaks and liair-lines of black and reddish-brown near tlie larger end, 

 measuring .98 by .60 of an inch. In the soutliern half of California they 

 are laid in the first or second week of May. At Santa Cruz, in 1866, he did 

 not observe any of this species until April 3. 



Mr. Allen did not meet with this species in Western Kansas, and it is not 

 included in his list of birds observed by him near Fort Hays. At Ogden 

 and Salt Lake City, in Utah, which he reached the first of September, Bul- 

 lock's Oriole had already migrated southward. 



In all tlie fertile portions of the country west of the plains, Mr. Bidgway 

 found Bullock's Oriole — the western representative of the Baltimore — ex- 

 tremely abundant. In May, when the valley of the Truckee, near Pyramid 

 Lake, was visited, he observed great numbers feeding upon the buds of the 

 grease-wood, in company with the Louisiana Tanager and the Black-headed 

 Grosbeaks. In certain localities tliere was scarcely a tree that did not con- 

 tain one or more nests of these birds, and as many as five have been found in 



