foe VU DWBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
Mee Onl ow AULD BON: § O:.C LET Y 
2001 NoRTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
Number 36 December, 1940 
Golden Orioles 
By MARGARET Morse NICE 
Illustration by JOOST TER PELKWYK 
A BLACK REDSTART sang its simple song from a chimney and a barn swallow 
twittered just as ours do at home as I walked down the village street of 
Altenberg, between the low stucco houses—buff, blue-gray and cream colored 
—with thick walls and roofs that made me think of Quebec. Nearly every 
gate had a notice Achtung. Bissiger Hund (Beware. Biting Dog), while 
one said Betteln und Hausieren Verboten, a warning to beggars and agents. 
A spruce branch hanging from one house signified, according to an ancient 
custom, that here the peasant sold his own wine. Everything was neat and 
clean, from the lace curtains at the casement windows to the sweet little 
girl pulling a kitten in a wagon. 
As I wandered along the road toward the Danube I heard my old friend 
the chiffchaff with his insistent zilpzalp zilpzalp zilpzalp; the Latin name, 
collybita, for this European warbler is well chosen, “the money-changer.” 
It had been raining earlier in the afternoon and the path was full of snails, 
small, medium and large. There was the kind liked by song thrushes; they 
had gray bodies and lovely yellow shells, some pure yellow, others yellow 
with black stripes and still others white with black rings. Then there were 
the huge brown ones which are eaten by people. Most common of all were 
those that nothing’ eats—with dark brown shells and black bodies. One had 
to be careful where one stepped. I remembered the poem I learned as a 
child, which began “Die Schnecke hat ein Haus,” and I did not wonder that 
this creature, so retiring and seldom seen in America, figures largely in 
European nursery rhymes and stories. 
The flowers in the meadows were bewilderingly lovely. Many were 
friends of my childhood, buttercups, daisy and red clover. Then there were 
strangers, the rich purple meadow salvia, a white catnip, and here and 
there a lavender harebell. There is something very appealing in such a 
mingling of the familiar and the new. 
The curious deep cooing of the turtle dove was followed by the melodious 
voice of the cuckoo, and then by a song which reminded me of the Bell 
vireo in Oklahoma, but I knew from past experience that it came from a 
white-throat, another of the European warblers, Sylvia communis. An 
earnest song thrush repeated his phrases over and over, reminding me of 
Ci 
