BULLOCK'S ORIOLE. 293 



DESCRIPTION: Tail, slightly graduated. Male, adult: Bright orange; whole head, throat, and upper parts, 

 black; wings, black, edged with white; lesser wing-coverts, orange; tail, black; the ijases of all the 

 feathers, yellow ; tips of outer tail-feathers, orange ; two white bands on the wings. Female: Paler 

 and duller; black replaced by grayish-yellow; wings, brownish-black; orange replaced by olive-yellow. 

 Males do not attain their full beauty of plumage until third year. Bill, bluish-black; feet, lead-colored. 

 Length, 7.50 to 8.15 inches; wing, 3.70; tail, 3.10 inches. 



BULLOCK'S ORIOLE. 



Icterus buUocki Bonaparte. 



Plate XXXI. Fig. 1. 



J^HE friend of Nature who for the first time enters California is surprised and 

 astonished by the singular aspect of the landscape, by the many peculiar plants, 

 trees, and shrubs, and by the many rare birds. Everywhere he notices new and 

 entirely different features in the landscape, and the ear listens to strange songs and 

 call-notes. With the exception of the Himalayas, where bush and tree-like rhododendrons 

 in many species and magnificent magnolias abound, no mountain range in the world 

 can show^ such a floral beauty as the Sierras of California, and they are unsurpassed in 

 their magnificent forests of coniferous trees, in their beautiful canons, cascades, and 

 mountain lakes and streams. The foaming and thundering waterfalls are always found 

 amidst a magnificent growth of conifers, the grandest and most gigantic in the world. 

 Here we find the sugar pine*, the noblest of its genus, the beautiful silver pine^, the 

 grand Douglas spruce', the .finely formed incense cedar*, the magnificent red fir*, and 

 above all the groves of big trees*, single trunks of these giants often measuring thirty- 

 five feet in diameter. Some of them, having attained a height of 325 feet, are certainly 

 from 2000 to 3000 years old. They are always found in groves by themselves, and 

 sauntering about among these giants "in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful 

 diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their 

 glory; these cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see 

 the Crimson-crested Woodcock, the prince of the Sierra Woodpeckers, drilling some dead 

 limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy 

 cackle. The Hummingbird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be 

 seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary in some leafless twig; here also 

 are the familiar Robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously 

 fitted for these majestic solitudes, and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, 

 exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together."* 



In the coniferous regions of these mountains we find a noble assemblage of flowers 

 of noble families. The mountain streams are fringed with strange shrubs, and in the 

 mountain meadows as well as in the rich soil of the woodland openings Humboldt, 



1 Piaus Lambertina. 2 P. ponderosa. 3 Pseudotsuga. Douglasii. * Libocedrus dccurrens. » A/jie.s magnWca. 



« Sequoia gigantca. 



♦ The Mountains of California. By John Muir. New Yorlc. 1804. 



