Wayside Observations . 143 



personage, his wife? She is seldom heard, and almost as 

 seldom seen. It is really remarkable her gift of con- 

 cealment. When she builds her nest is a mystery. It is 

 often so deftly hidden that you would not be likely 

 to find it, in a long hunt. In the spring of 1898 a pair of 

 orchard orioles took up their residence in the trees about 

 my house, the male singing his brisk overtures, the female 

 seen only at flitting intervals and never heard. Watch 

 as I would, I could not surprise her laying the timbers 

 of her cottage, which I felt sure was being built some- 

 where in the trees. Indeed, I did not discover it until 

 autumn came, long after the orioles, old and young, 

 had taken flight to a balmier clime, and the trees were 

 stripped of their leaves, when, lo! it appeared in plain 

 view on one of the trees on the opposite side of the street, 

 the very place where I had not thought of looking for it. 



The Baltimore orioles as a rule are not so secretive; 

 yet during the summer of 1898 a pair of these firebirds led 

 me a fruitless chase. Their secret was not divulged until 

 the leaves had fallen the next autumn, when there the 

 nest hung in the midst of a tall cottonwood in my back 

 yard close to the house. Lord Baltimore and his mate 

 usually suspend their nests on the outer branches of the 

 trees, where they are not hard to discover, but this pair 

 did not follow the common formula, for the nest was 

 placed in the thickest part of the foliage, so that it was 

 impossible to see it from the ground until the branches 

 were bare. 



Of all the malaperts of birddom none excel and few 

 10 



