34 Bailey, The Palm-leaf Oriole. [^"k 



palm, or in one too nearly like it to be distinguished by the unbotan- 

 ical. The wisdom of the choice is easily appreciated for the narrow- 

 leaves of the date palms offer no })rotection from the hot California 

 sun while the wide leaves of the fan palms are natural umbrellas, 

 and among fan palms the short-stemmed varieties with close-set 

 leaves would give little of the breeziness given by this long-stemmed 

 one whose leaves fan reasonably free of each other. The Wash- 

 ington palm in fact supplies at once three of man's inventions 

 worked out from nature's patterns — the fan, the umbrella, and the 

 fly or double roof. What better combination could a knowing 

 bird take advantage of in a hot country ? Nelsoni takes the fullest 

 advantage of it, hanging his nest neither in the dome of the umbrella 

 where there is the least breeze nor out on the fingers of the leaf 

 where the sun comes in, but just above the fingers where there is 

 not only shade but the most breeze. 



In choosing between individual trees, the taller seem to be 

 given the preference. At Corona where we found a palm fiber 

 nest in a pepper tree, palms and peppers alternated down the 

 street but the j)alms were not tall enough to raise their fans to a 

 safe height. The largest number of nests found together were in 

 two groups of particularly high palms. At Hemet, in the stately 

 arc of high trees bordering the hotel grounds where a man on a 

 ladder was sawing off the dead lower fans, eight nests were counted; 

 and at the Cold Water Canon hotel in the Santa Ana Mountains, 

 in an assembly of venerable palms twenty to forty feet high, twenty- 

 three were counted. At Hemet there would doubtless have been 

 more nests had the palms not been trimmed. In Cold Water 

 Caiion the twenty-three found were probably only a part of those 

 actually there for although the old fans were left on the trees, they 

 had drooped so low that even by walking around the trunk and 

 looking up inside the leaves it was hard to find the nests. 



Only a few occu})ied nests were seen as the orioles begin nesting 

 in A])ril and most of the nests enumerated were found in late July 

 and August. The discrepancy in dates among the occupied nests 

 accorded with Major Bendire's statement that "two and possibly 

 even three broods are sometimes raised in a season. Under date 

 of June 11, at Palm Springs, my notes read: "Attracted by the 

 sibilant cries of young birds from a palm in front of the house I 

 found neJsoni feeding young in a straw-colored ball of a nest under 



