182 
General Notes. 
the feast with various acts of courtship, and then flew off, each with a leaf 
or part of one in the beak. The same act was repeated during the day and on 
succeeding days until the trees were nearly as bare of leaves as in winter. 
As in the former year, a second set of leaves appeared and though the 
trees received a check in their growth, they recovered, increased in size 
and ripened their wood in due season. A similar destruction of leaves 
was performed by the same species of bird — probably the same pair — in 
i§8o, and the trees recovered their wonted vigor by repeating the process 
of preceding years. The second set of leaves were not eaten by the birds 
in either year, though they were in the garden more or less every day 
during the summer and frequently alighted in the trees,! separately, to- 
gether, and with their young. 
IJiad formerly considered the Icterus baltimorei essentially insectivorous 
and frugivorous ; I am now aware that some of them at least are decidedly 
vegetarian once in the year. — Elisha Slade, Somerset , Mass. 
A Peculiar Nest of the Baltimore Oriole. — When the leaves fell in 
the autumn of 1876, I discovered a bird’s nest suspended from a slender 
limb of a cotton-wood that stands, with others, on the outskirts of Charles 
City, (Iowa). This nest immediately attracted my attention, and I made 
several attempts to secure it, but was unsuccessful, as it hung near the 
end of a limb too slender to bear my weight. 
It hung there throughout the following winter, but in the spring of 1877 
a young friend of lighter weight than myself obtained it and gave it to 
me. It is, unmistakably, the nest of a Baltimore Oriole, — the material 
used in its construction and the manner in which it is woven plainly show 
this; but it differs very materially in shape from any other nest of the 
species that I have ever seen. 
The length of the nest is eleven inches; greatest diameter, four inches. 
Body of nest, an upright cone about eight inches in height, with a rounded 
base. It is composed of the ordinary material: “natural strings of the 
flax of the silk-weed,” horse-hair, etc. At its apex, several pieces of 
twine are woven into the fabric, and, about three inches above, are 
securely fastened to a horizontal twig, all at the same point, forming the 
sole support of the nest. The opening for entrance is in the side of the 
nest, at the point of its greatest diameter, about three inches from the 
base. It is perfectly circular and about one inch in diameter. — Henry S. 
Williams, Charles City, Floyd Co., Ia. 
The Three-toed Woodpecker ( Picoides articus ) in Massachusetts. 
— Records of the occurrence of the Black-backed Three-toed Woodpecker 
in Massachusetts have multiplied so slowly that the following additional 
one may be considered of interest: An adult male shot Dec. 17, 1880, at 
Plymouth, Massachusetts. I saw the specimen at Goodale’s when it was 
being mounted for Mr. John A. Joyce, the person by whom it was killed. 
William Brewster, Cambridge, Mass. 
