THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 27 
not a whit behind adults in musical attainments. Indeed, ] have sometimes 
fancied that the handicap of juvenile garb serves only to provoke superlative 
efforts in song on the part of the youthful aspirant. Certain it is that the 
two-year-old birds are often happily mated, and their music-loving wives are 
not always won from the ranks of those whom we should think “ower young 
to marry yet.” 
The nest of the Orchard Oriole is a beautiful and ingenious creation. 
Green grass blades of the tougher sorts are twisted and wrapped and inter- 
woven with the skill of a lace-maker, until a pouch some three inches wide 
by four inches deep is formed. ‘This is made fast by the brim to the spread- 
ing forks near the tip of some horizontal apple-limb, somewhat after the 
fashion of the Vireo’s; or else, and more commonly, it is slung between two 
or three spreading, upright forks. In the latter case it is tightly lashed, for its 
entire depth, to two or more of the ascending branches, thus more closely as- 
similating certain types of Redwings’ nests. Wilson states that when the 
descending branches of the weeping willow are chosen, the nest is made 
deeper and less rigid so as to allow for greater freedom of movement in the 
wind. ‘The same observer once examined a grass-strand taken from the 
Orchard’s nest, and found that in its thirteen inches of length it had been 
hooked through and returned some thirty-four times. 
When first constructed, of bright green grass, this Oriole’s nest is at the 
acme of invisibility, but as the season advances the color bleaches out, so that 
the young find themselves in a straw-colored cradle, which not infrequently 
invites rather than forbids attention. In our latitudes soft materials such as 
wool, plant-down, feathers, or even horse-hair, are used for lining; but further 
south the nest is said to be usually quite unlined. 
No. 11. 
BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 
A. O. U. No. 507. Icterus galbula (Linn.). 
Synonyms.— FIREBIRD; HANGBIRD; HANGNES?T; GOLDEN ROBIN. 
Description.—Adult male: Black and orange; head and neck all around, 
a “tongue” on the lower throat, upper back, and scapulars, wings (except lesser 
and greater coverts), and greater part of tail above, black,—warm and glossy ante- 
riorly, duller on wings and tail; tips of greater wing-coverts, and edging of 
quills and secondaries white; the remaining plumage orange. The orange varies 
in intensity from the paler plumage of the young males to the rich orange-red 
of the oldest birds. Female: General color orange-olive, clearest below and 
