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eaten only to the extent of 16 per cent. In destroying hairy caterpillars 
the birds eat only a small portion taken from the inside, and so require a 
large number of the insects to satisfy their appetites. These orioles also 
destroy great numbers of the catalpa sphinx larvae, which when unmolested 
defoliate catalpa trees. They are among the most valuable of our insec- 
tivorous birds. 
The Baltimore oriole enjoys green peas and is sometimes quite daring 
in taking them. Sometimes he troubles the grape grower. He is “fond of 
sweets. He has been seen to snip off the heads of white-headed or stingiless 
bees and draw out the viscera through the ring-like opening, for the sake 
of the honey-sack. How did he know it was there?” (Belle Paxson Drury). 
The poet-naturalist, Thompson, thus describes this oriole: 
You whisk wild splendors through the trees, 
And send keen fervors down the wind; 
You singe the jackets of the bees, 
And trail an opal mist behind. 
When flowery hints foresay the berry, 
On spray of haw and tuft of briar, 
Then, wandering incendiary, 
You set the maple swamps afire. 
2. Orchard Oriole. The orchard oriole is smaller, less brilliantly col- 
ored, and less bold than the Baltimore, but it is perhaps even more attractive 
in its quieter beauty and its more melodious song. The males of each 
species have one white wing-bar and the females have two. The adult 
orchard oriole in his chestnut and black dress somewhat resembles ‘a robin. 
The second-year breeding male is a greenish-yellow bird like 'the female, 
but usually has a black throat. (Occasionally a female of the Baltimore 
oriole has a black throat, but Baltimore orioles are always more orange- 
yellow than orchard orioles ever are.) Two of these birds had their nests 
in Wilmette in trees near the harbor in the summer of 1948. The female 
is largely greenish-yellow below and yellowish-olive above. 
The orchard oriole breeds over the greater part of the eastern United 
States as far west as North Dakota and south to southern Mexico; it 
winters from southern Mexico to northern Colombia. It is much rarer 
than the Baltimore oriole. “It prefers open woodlands and isolated groves, 
such as tree claims on western prairies,” says Roberts. 
The rusty blackbird often lines its nest with bright green grass, but 
the basket-like nest of the orchard oriole is made almost exclusively of 
green grass blades. “The nest is hemispherical in shape, open at the top, 
and generally about four inches in breadth and three deep. The cavity has 
a depth and width of about two inches” (Baird). Wilson found a nest 
with a grass strand 13 inches long that had been woven in and out through 
the wall of the nest and pulled tight no less than 34 times. In a green 
tree the nest is inconspicuous at first and remains so to a considerable 
