134 THE Birps Axsovut Us. 
will not put them on the outside of the nest; but the 
whole structure is less elaborate now than formerly. 
They are more like cups suspended by the rims than 
cylinders. This, it has been suggested, has come 
about from the fact that long, slender nests conceal- 
ing the sitting bird and inaccessibly placed are now 
not needed for safety, the birds so generally nesting 
near our houses, where their natural enemies are not 
found. I have seen one nest in an elm-tree but 
twelve feet from the ground and overhanging a part 
of a farm-yard where there was constant passing and 
repassing. When, on the other hand, you occasion- 
ally find a nest in a lonely spot away from any human 
habitation, there you will find the more elaborate 
structure, and placed where it cannot be reached ex- 
cept by the birds themselves. 
A few days after the first appearance of the Balti- 
more orioles there comes to the same places, and 
prances about in the same lively manner, a dull- 
colored black and red-brown bird that we know at 
once is an oriole, but not the Baltimore. Tomy mind 
he is a great improvement over his gaudy and noisy 
cousin. Fine feathers do not always make a fine bird. 
Its song has as many notes as the Baltimore, and 
none of them on the factory-whistle order. There 
is just the difference between the song of the Orchard 
Oriole and that of the Baltimore as between smooth- 
ness and roughness, as between the rattle of stones 
and the gliding of water over them. We would miss 
the Baltimore in summer, but it would be something 
like missing the bore we expected; not to have the 
orchard oriole would be a deprivation. 
