BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 
goned orange and black, and the bird’s colors are the 
same. The head, neck, shoulders, and the upper part of 
the back are jet black; breast, lower back, anc *he under 
parts brilliant cadmium orange; wings black, lesser 
coverts orange, margin of the greater coverts tipped with 
white; end half of middle tail feathers black, the rest 
orange with a middle black band. Female similarly 
marked with burnt orange (very dull) and rusty black. 
Nest, pendent from the Y of a small branch at the ex- 
tremity of the limb twenty to nearly fifty feet above the 
ground; woven of plant fibre, string, hair, grass, etc., 
and a perfect pocket in shape. Egg, white, curiously 
marked with scrawls of sepia brown, and with few spots. 
The female does nearly all the nest-building; it is doubt- 
ful if the male is very often allowed to assist.* Mrs. 
Olive Thorne Miller has named the young Oriole the 
cry-baby of the bird world, and that it is entitled to the 
appellation there is no shadow of doubt, if we except 
the young Swift. Both birds at a certain age keep up 
an incessant chippering clamor for food. 
The Oriole is a musician in the fullest sense of the 
word. His ability to whistle a well-constructed song is 
unquestionable. His only fault is his fragmentary treat- 
ment of a good theme, and his chary way of singing it. 
He is lavish with calls and chatterings, and devotes too 
much time to preliminaries before he begins on the song 
that he is well able to round out to a satisfactory finish. 
In this regard he is not equal to the Song Sparrow, 
whose exuberant good spirits are expressed by twenty 
songs in the same period of time that the Oriole would 
take for five. But the Song Sparrow’s voice is thin and 
weak beside that of the Oriole; the latter has a full, rich, 
round, though somewhat metallic whistle, suggestive of 
the mezzo-soprano, generally reliable in pitch and per- 
cussive in effect. Oriole, too, is not without the harsh, 
grating, unmusical note that belongs to his family (Ic- 
teride); for sometimes you hear a scolding tone issue 
from his bill that is reminiscent of the Grackle. <A bird 
* Certain authorities to the contrary. But the male does assist; 
my own observations are sufficiently supplemented by those of W 
E. D. Scott, vide Bird Studies, p. 90. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
: = 
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