126 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



The Baltimore oriole. 



color which makes him seem a splash of brilliant sunshine. The female, 

 although marked much the same, has the back so dull and mottled that 



it looks olive-brown; 

 the rump, breast, and 

 under parts are yel- 

 low but by no means 

 showy. The advan- 

 tage of these quiet 

 colors to the mother 

 bird is obvious since it 

 is she that makes the 

 nest and sits in it 

 without attracting at- 

 tention to its location. 

 In fact, when she is 

 sitting, her brilliant 

 mate places himself 

 far enough away to 

 distract the atten- 

 tion of meddlers, yet 

 near enough for her 

 to see the flash of his 

 breast in the sunshine 

 and to hear his rich and cheering song. He is a good spouse and 

 brings her the materials for the nest which she weaves in, hanging 

 head downward from a twig and using her long sharp beak for a 

 shuttle. And his glorious song is for her alone; some hold that no two 

 orioles have the same song; I know of two individuals at least whose 

 songs were sung by no other birds; one gave a phrase from the Wald- 

 vogel's song in Sigfried; the other whistled over and over, "Sweet 

 birdie, hello, hello." The orioles can chatter and scold as well as sing. 



The oriole is a brave defender of his nest and a most devoted father, 

 working hard to feed his ever hungry nestlings; we can hear these hollow 

 mites peeping for more food, "Tee dee dee. Tee dee dee", shrill and con- 

 stant, if we stop for a moment under the nest in June. The young birds 

 dress in the safe colors of the mother, the males not donning their bright 

 plumage until the second year. A brilliant colored fledgling would not 

 live long in a world where sharp eyes are in constant quest for little birds 

 to fill empty stomachs. 



The food of the oriole places it among our most beneficial birds, since 

 it is always ready to cope with the hairy caterpillars avoided by most 

 birds ; it has learned to abstract the caterpillar from his spines and is thus 

 able to swallow him minus his "whiskers." The orioles are waging a 

 great war against the terrible brown-tail and gipsy moths in New England; 

 they also eat click beetles and many other noxious insects. Once when 

 we were breeding big caterpillars in the Cornell insectary, an oriole came 

 in through the open windows of the greenhouse, and thinking he had 

 found a bonanza proceeded to work it, carrying of? our precious crawlers 

 before we discovered what he was at. 



The orioles winter in Central America and give us scarcely four months 

 of their company. They do not usually appear before May and leave in 

 early September. 



