176 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



northern tier of states are nowhere abundant, and I have never seen or 

 heard one in Massachusetts although they are frequently met with in 

 Connecticut and Rhode Island. 



Few of the smaller birds show the changes in plumage that this one 

 does. Young birds of both sexes are dull olive green above and olive 

 yellow below, and the adult females are similar to this plumage but are 

 still duller; the second year the male has a black throat and more or 

 less of the face, the black on the throat sometimes being quite exten- 

 sive and invading the breast; the rest ot the plumage does not differ 

 from that of the first year except that the back is usually grayer and 

 sometimes there are traces of chestnut on the breast. The third year 

 they get their full adult plumage of chestnut and black, with no trace 

 of yellowish in the plumage. 



Although they are generally birds of the orchard, where they do 

 good services for the farmers by destroying insects, they are also 

 found in open woods where they are a great deal more apt to build pen- 

 sile nests than in orchards. During the latter part of May they com- 

 mence to build their nests; these are beautiful and ingenious structures 

 made almost wholly of long grass strips skillfully woven and threaded 

 together, making a very strong home and with the walls generally of 

 unusual thickness. They are usually of about the same depth as the 

 width and are rarely long like those of the Baltimore Oriole. In some 

 localities they are said to hang these basket-like structures by the rim to 

 drooping branches, but of those that I have seen, some fifteen or 

 twenty in Rhode Island, all were placed in upright forks in apple trees 

 and only in two instances partially suspended from the short stiff twigs. 

 Sometimes these nests are made of green grasses, and when such is 

 the case they are among the most handsome of bird homes as they re- 

 tain some of their color long after the birds have ceased using them. 



The young, which, in southern New England, are hatched about the 

 middle of June, are naked and helpless for the first few days of their 

 life, gradually assuming the soft fluffly olive colored plumage preced- 

 ing flight and leaving the nest in about three weeks after their birth. 

 They are fed upon worms and caterpillars and also some fruit and 

 berries, especially cherries and mulberries. 



The birds, both adults and young, are generally quiet after nesting 

 and early in September, commence to disappear and by the middle of 

 the month, none of them are to be found in the northern portions of 

 their range, and a month later they are all beyond our borders, spend- 

 ing the long, dreary winter months in a land of perpetual sunshine. 



