ORCHARD ORIOLE. fig 



black on the head is deep and velvety ; that of the wings 

 inclining to brown; the greater wing-coverts are tipt with 

 white. In the same orchard, and at the same time, males 

 in each of these states of plumage may be found, united to 

 their respective plain-coloured mates. 



In all these, the manners, mode of building, food, and notes, 

 are, generally speaking, the same, differing no more thau 

 those of any other individuals belonging to one common 

 species. The female appears always nearly the same. 



I have said that these birds construct their nests very diffe- 

 rently from the baltimores. They are so particularly fond of 

 frequenting orchards, that scarcely one orchard in summer is 

 without them. They usually suspend their nest from the 

 twigs of the apple tree ; and often from the extremities of the 

 outward branches. It is formed exteriorly of a particular 

 species of long, tough, and flexible grass, knit or sewed 

 through and through in a thousand directions, as if actually 

 done with a needle. An old lady of my acquaintance, to 

 whom I was one day showing this curious fabrication, after 

 admiring its texture for some time, asked me, in a tone between 

 joke and earnest, whether I did not think it possible to learn 

 these birds to darn stockings ? This nest is hemispherical, 

 three inches deep by four in breadth ; the concavity scarcely 

 two inches deep by two in diameter. I had the curiosity to 

 detach one of the fibres, or stalks of dried grass, from the nest, 

 and found it to measure thirteen inches in length, and in that 

 distance was thirty-four times hooked through and returned, 

 winding round and round the nest ! The inside is usually 

 composed of wool, or the light downy appendages attached to 

 the seeds of the Platanus occidentalis, or button-wood, which 

 form a very soft and commodious bed. Here and there the 

 outward work is extended to an adjoining twig, round which it 

 is strongly twisted, to give more stability to the whole, and 

 prevent it from being overset by the wind. 



When they choose the long pendant branches of the weep- 

 ing willow to build in, as they frequently do, the nest, though 



