166 
The Orchard Oriole 
Friendly 
Disposition 
house or along a village street, especially in the thick foliage of the Nor- 
way spruces frequently planted about our lawns. Always during the 
breeding season, however, the Orchard Oriole is distinctly a bird of the , 
cultivated land immediately about man’s habitation, rather than of the 
wilder, wooded country. When the nesting cares are over the Orioles 
scatter more widely, and we often come upon little family parties foraging 
along the fence-roads and edges of the 1 woods, far 
from house or garden. Originally, before there were 
any orchards to lure him away, the Orchard Oriole 
was an inhabitant of wooded river-banks, according to Mr. Widmann’s 
experience in Missouri; and in Pennsylvania I have found it in such 
places along the wilder parts of the lower Susquehanna Valley. 
It is no easy matter to get sight of the singing Oriole, as he clings 
closely to the shelter offered by the dense foliage of the tree-tops. Now 
and then, however, he flies rapidly from one favorite feeding-spot to 
another, or back to the nest-tree. As he comes suddenly into view on 
one of these flights he always seems smaller than one would expect ; 
probably the volume of his song, or our familiarity with his relative, 
the Baltimore Oriole, leads us to picture him larger than he really is. 
His length is seven inches, nearly an inch shorter than the Baltimore. 
The food of the Orchard Oriole consists largely of caterpillars and 
other insects that he finds among the tree-tops ; but now and then, | 
especially after the breeding season, we see an individual alight in an ; 
open field, often on plowed ground, in search of other insects that lurk 
there. William Brewster has also noticed these birds in South Carolina 
hovering before trumpet-flowers, sipping honey after the manner of 
Hummingbirds. In late summer, when the family | 
groups go foraging about the country, berries of vari- i 
ous kinds seem to constitute a large portion of their 
food ; but so far as I am aware they never do serious damage to culti- 
vated fruit. 
On this subject of food Major Bendire writes: “Few birds do more 
good and less harm than our Orchard Oriole, especially to the fruit j 
grower. The bulk of its food consists of small beetles, plant-lice, flies, 
hairless caterpillars, cabbage-worms, grasshoppers, rose-bugs, and larvae j 
of all kinds, while the few berries it may help itself to during the short 
time they last are many times paid for in the greater number of noxious 
insects destroyed ; and it certainly deserves the fullest protection.” 
The nest of the Orchard Oriole is usually supported upon slender 
twigs in the top of an apple-tree. It is somewhat pensile, but much 
shorter and more rigid than the long, pocket-like nest of the Baltimore ; 
in fact, it is usually nearly spherical, with the opening somewhat con- 
stricted. It is made of fine, dry, greenish or yellow grass, elaborately 
interwoven and lined, especially on the bottom, with soft vegetable down 
from thistle-blooms, buttonwood-seeds, etc. Wilson relates that he care- 
fully unwound a single strand of grass from one of these nest and found 
Service to 
Mankind 
