ORCHARD ORIOLE. 281 



arrivals, like the Robin and Bluebird, have raised their first brood of young. The air 

 is vocal with the sweetest music of innumerable birds. The inimitable feong of the 

 Mockingbird, once heard from one of the grand magnolias or from an arbor covered 

 with flowering "Marechal Niel" or "cloth of gold" roses, makes the heart long for the 

 sunny South and its untold attractions through all our life-time. Not to speak of the 

 Cardinals in the Cherokee rose hedges, the Painted Buntings in the orange trees, and 

 the Blue Grosbeaks in the banana shrubs, abelias, myrtles, and laurustinus ! 



Among the choristers of the southern gardens, from Texas and northern Florida 

 to southern Illinois and Missouri, the Orchard Oriole, Garden Oriole, and Orchard 

 Hangnest, is one of the most abundant and conspicuous. When I first beheld this bird, 

 clad in a robe of deep black and rich chestnut, I was strongly impressed by its extremely 

 sweet, hilarious, and flowing strains, and by its confiding and attractive manners. Its 

 song, which is always accompanied by fluttering motions and by swingings up and 

 down, to and fro, is usually uttered from the top of a small tree or a large bush. I 

 have observed this sprightly songster, which is rather a more southerly bird than its 

 brilliant relative, the Baltimore Oriole, equally abundant from Texas and northern 

 Florida to south-western Missouri. Although a common bird in the Rio Grande valley 

 of Texas, T have never found it in the orange groves of the peninsula of Florida. In 

 Wisconsin as w^ell as in northern Illinois it is a very rare bird, seldom seen or heard. 

 In New England it is said to be most numerous in the Connecticut valley, but rare in 

 Massachusetts. According to Mr. R. Ridgway it is much more abundant in southern 

 Illinois than the Baltimore Oriole and the same can be said in regard to its distribution 

 in Kansas. In southern Missouri, where the Orchard Oriole is one of the most common 

 birds, I have never seen the Baltimore Oriole during the breeding season. The Orchard 

 Oriole is found east to the Atlantic Ocean and west to the base of the Rocky Mountains. 



Although a numerous bird in the mesquit prairies of Texas, the Orchard Oriole is 

 pre-eminently a garden and orchard bird, being one of the most familiar and beloved 

 birds of the South. In Texas it is scarcely absent from any peach orchard, and in 

 Louisiana it is abundantly met with in the orange groves. In northern Florida and 

 southern Georgia it is a regular tenant of the pear plantations, and in south-western 

 Missouri apple orchards constitute its favorite haunts. In Houston, Texas, it often 

 nests in a magnolia in close proximity of a house, and in New Orleans the structure is 

 often found in one of the dense evergreen tree-like privets {Ligustrum Japonicum) , so 

 common in the streets of the "Crescent City." In south-western Missouri it builds its 

 nests in quite a number of different shade trees, even in the coarse branches of Scotch 

 pines. In Pennsylvania these Orioles have been observed building in willows along 

 creeks, and the only pair which I have met with in northern Illinois was observed in 

 willows near the Desplaines River. In south-eastern Texas these birds usually make 

 their appearance by the middle of April. The first arrivals are old males. A few days 

 later the young males, which are easily distinguished by their incomplete coloration, 

 follow, and about five or six days later the females make their appearance. 



Prof. Wm. Brewster found this Oriole abundant in St. Mary's, Ga. "Another 

 frequenter of the village shrubbery," hp writes, "was the Orchard Oriole. His flute-Hke 

 voice, which bears some resemblance to that of the Fox Sparrow, could be heard almost 



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