104 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



bird's dinner flies by while he waits, and he does 

 police duty while he watches for it. He is 

 rightly named and no marauder dares approach 

 while he sits dominant on the topmost bough. 

 He is guardian thus of his less belligerent neigh- 

 bors. 



The oriole, trained in tropic woodlands to 

 avoid climbers, instinctively finds the pendulous 

 tips of slender elm boughs the best place for his 

 nest, yet often in apple-blossom time he becomes 

 so enamored of them that the white snow of their 

 falling petals leaves him building on the twigs 

 from which they scatter. In July the incessant, 

 cry-baby twittering of the young orioles is thus 

 as common a sound of the orchard and pasture 

 as it is of the elm-shaded street. Other apple 

 tree nest-hangers are the vireos, yellow throated, 

 red-eyed and white-eyed, all of whom love to 

 build on the low-swinging tips of the benedictory 

 limbs. It seems to me that no other tree attracts 

 such a variety of beautiful birds out of what one 

 might think to be their usual environment. Of 

 these I may cite the scarlet tanager and the rose- 

 breasted grosbeak, both rather shy woodland 

 dwellers, the tanager the friend of the tall tim- 

 ber, the grosbeak partial to sprout land and sec- 



