1892.
July 5
Concord, Massachusetts.
Mass.
Concord.- Another fine, cool day with light E. wind and
deep blue sky sprinkled with white cumulus clouds.
  Two young Orioles left the nest in the elm in front of the
Buttricks' on the 1st inst.[instant: i.e. 1 July] but at least one of the brood still
clung to it as late as the forenoon of the 3rd. They were
all out yesterday but one arrived in the tree last evening.
This morning two were calling in an elm on the opposite
side of the road and both parents were busily engaged in
supplying them with food. The father went to the orchard
but the mother, as long as I watched her, regularly flew
down into the tall, uncut English grass in Mr. Keyes's field
where, after perching on a weed head for a moment, she hopped
down to the ground and was of course lost to view. As she came
flying back I was struck by the tone of mingled anxiety &
interrogation of her low call. "Where? where"? she seemed to
say. [delete]Here mam-ma[/delete] "Here-we-are" (Hear-we-are falling inflection ※) both
young would promptly drawl in answer and then, as she alighted
near them, would repeat and extend this to: "Here-we-are
mam-ma, [delete]here[/delete] here-we-are-mam-ma". It really required
almost no imagination to fit these words to the calls
in question and now that they have occurred to me
the calling of young Orioles will no longer be to my
ears, as it always has been, a disagreeable sound.
[margin]Brood of
young Orioles[/margin]
[margin]※[reference mark] A week later when this call [delete]which[/delete]
had become louder and mellower it
often bore a strong resemblance to
the whistle of the Greater Yellow-leg
the form being almost exactly the
same[/margin]
  On May 16th I first saw the pair of Orioles in the
elm where this brood have been successfully reared. The
male was probably about the house before this but if so
I failed to distinguish him from migrating birds.l On the
16th, about noon, he came into the elm with his mate and
flying to the exact spot where the nest was afterwards built
clung with feet wide apart between the pendant twigs
for a minute or more uttering a low, continuous chattering
[margin]History of
Oriole's nest[/margin]