OUR FOREST CHORISTERS. 169 



a wound received at the famous Battle of the Pines, when 

 one tribe, overcome by numbers, was driven away from its 

 ancient camping-ground. 



12. Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have seen 

 seven males flashing about the garden at once. A merry 

 crew of them swing their hammocks from the pendulous 

 boughs. Last year a pair of orioles built on the lowest 

 trailer of a weeping elm, which hung within ten feet of 

 our drawing-room window, and so low that I could reach 

 it from the ground. The nest was wholly woven and 

 felted with ravelings of woolen carpet, in which scarlet 

 predominated. They were very bold in the cpiest of cord- 

 age, and I have often watched them stripping the fibrous 

 bark from the honeysuckle growing over the very door. 



13. But, indeed, all my birds look upon me as if I 

 were a mere tenant at will, and they were landlords. With 

 shame I confess it, I have been bullied even by a hum- 

 ming-bird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of 

 its lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs came hur- 

 rying toward me, couching his long bill like a lance, his 

 throat sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from a 

 Missouri currant whose honey he was sipping. And many 

 a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed. 



14. The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tink- 

 ling through the garden in blossoming-time ; but this year, 

 owing to the long rains early in the season, their favorite 

 meadow was overflowed, and they were driven to the up- 

 land. So I had a pair of them domiciled in my grass-field. 

 The male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in full 

 bloom, and, while I stood perfectly still close by, lie would 

 circle away, quivering round the entire field of five acres, 

 with no break in his song, and settle down again among 

 the blossoms, to be hurried away again almost immediately 

 by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an 

 Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, appeared to be 



