214 
ORCHARD ORIOLE. 
same colour. This bird is now evidently approaching to its per- 
fect plumage, as represented in fig. 4, where the black spreads 
over the whole head, neck, upper part of the back, breast, wings 
and tail, the reddish bay or bright chestnut occupying the lower 
part of the breast, the belly, vent, rump, tail-coverts, and three 
lower rows of the lesser wing-coverts. The 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 repective plain-coloured mates. 
In all these the manners, mode of building, food and notes 
are, generally speaking, the same, differing no more than 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 differ- 
ently 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 dicf 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 at- 
tached to the seeds of the Platanus Occident alis, or button- 
wood, which form a very soft and commodious bed. Here and 
there the outward work is extended to an adjoining twig, round 
