51 
"THE BULLOCK ORIOLE. 
be settled at the beginning of the season, but 
rivalry is chiefly between the under-colored 
young blades who must make their peace 
with the sweet girl graduates of the pre- 
vious year. Orioles are very closely at- 
tached to a suitable locality, once chosen, 
and a group of nests in a single tree pre- 
senting successive annual stages of 
preservation, is fairly eloquent of 
conjugal fidelity. 
The purse-shaped nest of the 
Bullock Oriole is a marvel of indus- 
try and skill, fully equal in these 
respects to that of the Baltimore 
3ird. A specimen before me, from 
a small willow on Crab Creek, in 
Lincoln County, taken just after its 
completion, is composed entirely of 
vegetable fibers, the frayed inner 
bark of dead willows being chiefly 
in evidence, while plant-downs of 
willow, poplar, and clematis are 
felted into the interstices of the 
lower portion. This pouch is lashed at the brim by a hundred tiny cables to 
the sustaining twigs, and hangs to a depth of six inches, with a mean diameter 
of nearly three, yet so delicate are the materials and so fine the workmanship, 
that the whole structure weighs less than half an ounce. 
A more bulky, loose-meshed affair, taken at Brook Lake No. 4, in 
Douglas County, has a maximum depth of nine inches outside, a mean depth 
of six and a half inches inside, and a greater diameter of five inches. 
Near farm houses or in town the birds soon learn the value of string, 
thread, frayed rope, and other waste materials, and nests are made entirely 
of these less romantic substances. Occasionally a bird becomes entangled in 
the coils of a refractory piece of string or horse-hair, and tragedies of Orioles 
hanged at their own doorstep are of record. 
The eggs of this species, four to six in number, are usually of a pale 
smoky gray color, and upon this ground appear curious and intricate scrawl- 
ings of purplish black, as tho made by a fine pen, held unsteadily while the 
egg was twirled. The purpose of this bizarre ornamentation, if indeed it 
has any, may be thought to appear where scanty coils of black horse-hair in 
the lining of the nest show up in high relief against the normal white back- 
Taken near Spokane. Photo by F. S. Merrill. 
FEMALE BULLOCK ORIOLE. 
