more in colonial days. The correspondence of yellow and black on his heraldic livery 

 with the coloring of this bird, which w^as abundant in his new estates, sufficed to make 

 this Oriole known as the "Baltimore Bird." 



These brilliant and extremely lively birds are hailed as the true harbingers of the 

 approaching warm and flowery season. Coming from their winter home in Central 

 America, southern Mexico, and the West Indies, they make their appearance in southern 

 New England in the first week of May, in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois 

 rarely before the 9th and 10th of that month, always when the plum and cherry trees 

 are white with blossoms. They announce their arrival by their loud and liquid song 

 and by their rattling call-notes. There can he scarcely a more enchanting and beautiful 

 picture imagined than these fiery, exceedingly active and vocal birds in the masses of 

 white blossoms and tender green foliage ! It seems as if they were trying to induce us 

 to take part in their jubilee and pleasure. Indeed, they fill the soul of every lover of 

 Nature with enthusiasm and ideal thoughts, and even the indolent listen to the song 

 and enjoy it. In south-western Missouri I have never seen this Oriole, and in southern 

 Louisiana I have seen the males pass through rapidly by the 20th of April. About 

 a week later I observed small flocks of migrating females in the flowering magnolias. 

 At the North the males precede the females about six or eight days. The latter always 

 arrive when the apple trees are in full bloom, and there can be no more beautiful sight 

 than the gorgeously colored wooing male on the side of his humbler mate amid the 

 wealth of white and rosy blossoms. They are extremely regular in the time of their 

 arrival, and year after year they appear at any point about the same day. 



The Baltimore Oriole has a very extensive range of distribution, being found at 

 various seasons throughout eastern North America south to the West Indies and 

 Central America. Its breeding range extends from the Atlantic to the Plains, and from 

 Texas and Florida to the interior of British America, having been traced north to the* 

 55th parallel of latitude. Dr. J. A. Allen met with it at the base of the Rocky Mount- 

 ains, in Colorado, and in Kansas he found it, as well as the Orchard Oriole, abundant. 

 I have never observed it during the breeding season in Texas and south-western 

 Missouri, and never in Florida, though Dr. T. M. Brewer has received nest and eggs 

 from Monticello, in northern Florida. According to Audubon it breeds in Louisiana 

 and Texas, and this is probably true to some extent in some localities, for we know 

 that the Baltimore Oriole, even in the North, is abundant in one locality and exceedingly 

 scarce or not at all found in another. In Wisconsin and northern Illinois it was once 

 a very numerous bird, but its very beauty has led to its destruction. Its brilliant 

 plumage made it desirable to the hat-bird collector as well as to the pseudo-ornithologist. 

 "Women's heartlessness," as Celia Thaxter calls it, is to a great extent responsible for 

 the depopulation of our groves, orchards, meadows, and woodlands. It has been often 

 the case in New England as well as in other parts of the country, that all the male 

 birds in one district were exterminated within a short time after their arrival from 

 the South. 



The favorite haunts of this brilliant bird are cultivated districts, well watered, and 

 where large trees are scattered around. In Wisconsin I have found them especially in 

 the scattered elms of the cleared lowlands and even in Lombardy poplars near houses, 



