214 ORCHARD ORIOLE. 



same colour. This bird is now evidently approaching to its per- 

 fect plumage, as represented in fig. 4, where the black spreads 

 over the whole head, neck, upper part of the back, breast, wings 

 and tail, the reddish bay or bright chestnut occupying the lower 

 part of the breast, the belly, vent, rump, tail-coverts, and three 

 lower rows of the lesser wing-coverts. The black on the head 

 is deep and velvety ; that of the wings inclining to brown; the 

 greater wing-coverts are tipt with white. In the same orchard, 

 and at the same time, males in each of these states of plumage 

 may be found, united to their repective plain-coloured mates. 



In all these the manners, mode of building, food and notes 

 are, generally speaking, the same, differing no more than those 

 of any other individuals belonging to one common species. The 

 female appears always nearly the same. 



I have said that these birds construct their nests very differ- 

 ently from the Baltimores. They are so particularly fond of 

 frequenting orchards, that scarcely one orchard in summer is 

 without them. They usually suspend their nest from the twigs 

 of the apple tree; and often from the extremities of the outward 

 branches. It is formed exteriorly of a particular species of long, 

 tough and flexible grass, knit or sewed through and through in 

 a thousand directions, as if actually done with a needle. An old 

 lady of my acquaintance, to whom I was one day showing this 

 curious fabrication, after admiring its texture for some time, 

 asked me in a tone between joke and earnest, whether I did not 

 think it possible to learn these birds to darn stockings. This 

 nest is hemispherical, three inches deep by four in breadth ; the 

 concavity scarcely two inches deep by two in diameter. I had 

 the curiosity to detach one of the fibres, or stalks, of dried grass 

 from the nest, and found it to measure thirteen inches in length, 

 and in that distance was thirty-four times hooked through and 

 returned, winding round and round the nest! The inside is 

 usually composed of wool, or the light downy appendages at- 

 tached to the seeds of the Platanus occidentalis, or button- 

 wood, which form a very soft and commodious bed. Here and 

 there the outward work is extended to an adjoining twig, round 



