WAYS OF NATURE 



might ask, What in the name of anything and every- 

 thing but the " Modern School of Nature Study " do 

 orioles knoT^ about strings fraying in the wind and 

 the use of knots to prevent it ? They have never had 

 occasion to know ; they have had no experience with 

 strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind. 

 They often use strings, to be sure, in building their 

 nests, but they use them in a sort of haphazard way, 

 weaving them awkwardly into the structure, and 

 leaving no loose ends that would suffer by fraying 

 in the wind. Sometimes they use strings in attaching 

 the nest to the limb, but they never knot or tie them ; 

 they simply wind them round and round as a child 

 might. It is possible that a bird might be taught to 

 tie a knot with its foot and beak, though I should 

 have to see it done to be convinced. But the orioles 

 in question not only tied knots ; they tied them with 

 a " reversed double hitch, the kind that a man uses 

 in cinching his saddle"! More wonderful still, not 

 finding in a New England elm-embowered town a 

 suitable branch from which to suspend their nest, 

 the birds went down upon the ground and tied three 

 twigs together in the form of " a perfectly measured 

 triangle " (no doubt working from a plan drawn to a 

 scale). They attached to the three sides of this frame- 

 work four strings of equal length (eight or ten inches), 

 all carefully doubled, tied them to a heavier string, 

 carried the whole ingenious contrivance to a tree, 

 and tied it fast to a limb in precisely the way you 



