ORCHARD ORIOLE. 
69 
same orchard, and at the same time, males in each of these 
states of plumage may be found, united to their respective 
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 diffe- 
rently 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 shewing this curious fabrication, after 
admiring its texture for some time, asked me, in a tone between 
joke and earnest, whether I did 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 attached to the 
seeds of the Platanus occidentalism or button-wood, which form 
a very soft and commodious bed. Here and there the outward 
work is extended to an adjoining twig, round which it is 
strongly twisted, to give more stability to the whole, and 
prevent it from being overset by the wind. 
When they choose the long pendent branches of the weep- 
ing willow to build in, as they frequently do, the nest, though 
formed of the same materials, is made much deeper, and of 
slighter texture. The circumference is marked out by a 
