BULLOCK’S ORIOLE. 679 
brilliant hues, being plain olive-grey above and whitish beneath 
with pale yellow on the head, breast and some other parts. The 
young male at first resembles the female. This is only one of 
countless cases in which the sexes bear such relations in color. 
The mother-bird, almost defenceless amidst many dangers, and 
wholly incapable of protecting her young, is shielded by her hum- 
ble garb, matching the foliage in which she lives, that she may 
pass to and from her nest unobserved, and accomplish her impor- 
tant maternal offices in safety. We may judge how well this be- 
neficent design is accomplished, by a glance at any of our large 
collections Fig. 120. 
where this spe- 
cies is repre- Ys 
sented; fora Ba 
dozen or more è 
of the richly at- ` 
tired males will 
be found for one 
of the female. 
Of the many 
beautiful ori- 
oles that inhabit 
Tropical Ameri- 
ca, only two— 
the Baltimore 
and the orchard 
— range north- 
ward through the Eastern United States. In the west, several 
kinds reach our southern borders, but Bullock’s is the only one that 
proceeds further north. Its distribution in the west corresponds, 
in a general way, with that of the Baltimore in the east. Itinhab- 
its all the wooded portions of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific re- 
gions of the United States; in most of its range it is separated 
from the habitat of the Baltimore by the intervening treeless Cen- 
tral Plateau, though the two species approach closely, if indeed 
they may not be found together, along the Upper Missouri. We 
have no record of its reaching into British America, but should 
not be surprised to learn that it extends its range beyond the Uni- 
ted States in summer. Being strictly a migratory species, like 
all of its family, it passes south in the fall, to winter in the 
Bullock’s Oriole. 
