The Orchard Oriole 
167 
Nesting 
Habits 
it to be thirteen inches long, and to have been looped through the other 
strands thirty-four times. The eggs are grayish white with lavender 
spots, blackish blotches, and “pen-marks and are thus similar to those 
of the Baltimore, but smaller and more coarsely marked. They number 
three to five, and measure 80 by 55 hundreths of an inch. 
I have noticed that Orchard Orioles and Kingbirds often nest in the 
same tree in the orchards of southern Pennsylvania, 
and was interested to find that other observers have 
noticed the same thing in Maryland and South Caro- 
lina. For some reason or other the pugnacious Flycatcher, that usually 
drives all other birds from the vicinity of his nest-tree, seems able to live 
on the best of terms with the modest Orchard Oriole. 
Audubon, describing the habits of the Orchard Oriole in Louisiana, 
remarks that the male has a habit of mounting on the wing during the 
mating season, jerking his tail and body, flapping his wings, and sing- 
ing with remarkable impetuosity. “These gambols and carollings are 
performed frequently during the day, the intervals being employed in 
ascending or descending along the branches and twigs of different trees, 
in search of insects or larvse. In doing this they rise on their legs, 
seldom without jetting the tail, stretch their neck, seize the prey and 
emit a single note. . . At other times it is seen bending its body 
downward in a curved posture, with head greatly inclined upward to 
peep at the underparts of the leaves, SO' as not to suffer any grub to 
escape its vigilance.” 
The plumage of the male Orchard Oriole is subject to striking changes 
as the bird passes from nestling to adult, and these proved very puzzling 
to the early ornithologists. In fact, it was left for that painstaking 
student, Alexander Wilson, properly to explain the several plumages 
of this bird. The old male is shown at the top of the accompanying 
plate in his chestnut-and-black spring dress, while the female at all 
times wears the olive-and-yellow plumage shown in the lowest figure. 
The male in its nesting-plumage, and during the first 
autumn, is similar to the adult female ; but by the next 
spring we find that he has acquired a black throat, 
such as we see in the middle figure so that we often find one nest at- 
tended by a black-throated, olive-green male, while the proprietor of the 
next is clad in chestnut-and-black. 
To add to the complication some of the olive-green males have a 
part of the tail-feathers black, and have black and chestnut spots on 
other parts of the body. Some ornithologists are of the opinion that 
these birds are in their second-year breeding plumage, while the black- 
and-chestnut birds are in the third ; but it seems probable that they 
represent merely individual variations, and that all the males are in the 
black-and-chestnut dress by their second nesting-season. 
At any rate, the male Orchard Oriole is a good example of the inter- 
esting problems that are encountered in the study of sequence of plumages 
Development 
of Plumage 
