How falls it, Oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendour through our northern sky?
At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?
Or did an orange tulip flaked with black,
In some forgotten ages back,
Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird?
—Edgar Fawcett.
“The Baltimore Oriole should be first mentioned, for his voice is that
of the bugler that heralds actual spring, the long-expected,
long-delayed mellow period, distinct from the almanac spring, that, when
it once comes to us of the middle and north country, is quickly absorbed
by the ardour of summer herself. Also is this Oriole the gloriously
illuminated initial letter wrought in ruddy gold and black pigments
heading the chapter that records the season; and when we see him high in
a tree against a light tracery of fresh foliage, we know in very truth
that not only is winter over, that the treacherous snow-squalls of April
are past, but that May is working day and night to complete the task
allotted.
“For as the Indian waited for the blooming of the dogwood, _Cornus
florida_, before planting his maize, so does the prudent gardener wait
for the first call of the Oriole before she trusts her cellar-wintered
geraniums and lemon balms once more to the care of Mother Earth.
“This Oriole has history blended with his name; for it is said that
George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, tired and discouraged by many
of the troubles of his Newfoundland colony, in visiting the Virginia
settlement in 1628, explored the waters of the Chesapeake, where he
found the shores and woods alive with birds, and conspicuous among them,
vast flocks of Orioles. These so pleased him that he took their colours
for his own and they ever afterward bore his name—a fair exchange.
“The _Baltimore Oriole_ comes of a party-coloured American
family—_Icteridæ_—that to the eye of the uninitiated at least would
appear to be a hybrid clan drawn from all quarters of the bird world.
Yet it is typically American, even in this variety; for what other race
would have the temerity to harbour the Bobolink, Orchard and Baltimore
Orioles, Red-wing, Meadowlark, various Grackles, together with the
vagrant Cowbird, in the branches of the same family tree?
“One of the many welcome facts concerning the Oriole is the ease with
which he is identified; and I say _he_ advisedly, for his more
industrious half, who is the expert weaver of the pair, is much the more
sombre of hue. In early May, or even as late as the middle of the month
in backward seasons, you will hear a half-militant, half-complaining
note from the high tree branches. As you go out to find its origin, it
will be repeated, and then a flash of flame and black will shoot across
the range of vision toward another tree, and the bird, chiding and
complaining, begins a minute search along the smaller twigs for insects.
This is the Oriole, _Icterus galbula_, as he first appears in full
spring array,—his head, throat, and top of back and wings black, except
a few margins and quills that are white edged. The breast and
underparts, lower part of back, and lesser wing-coverts are orange
flame, while his tail is partly black and partly orange.
“Two other tree-top birds that arrive at about the same time, one to
remain and one to pass on, wear somewhat the same combination of red and
black,—the Redstart and the Blackburnian Warbler. But, besides being
much smaller birds, they both belong to the pretty tribe of Warblers
that, with a few notable exceptions, such as the Chat and
Water-thrushes, should be more properly called ‘lispers’ and not be
confused with the clear-toned Oriole.
“Once the female Oriole arrives, usually several days after the male,
his complaining call, ‘Will you? Will you really, truly?’ gradually
lessens: and after a few weeks, when nest-building begins, it quite
disappears, or rather, is appropriated by the songless female, who,
while she weaves the nest, is encouraged by the clarion song of her
mate. The plumage of the female is brown and gray blended with orange
above, the head, back, and throat being mottled with black, while the
underparts are a dull orange, with little of the flaming tints of the
male.
“Though the Oriole exposes himself more freely to view than most of our
highly coloured birds and in fact seems to regard his gift of beauty
anything but seriously, he takes no chances, however, in the locating of
his nest, which is not only from twenty feet above the ground upward,
but is suspended from a forked branch that is at once tough yet so
slender that no marauding cat would dare venture to it. This pensile
nest is diligently woven of grasses, twine, vegetable fibres, horsehair,
bits of worsted, or anything manageable and varies much in size and
shape, as if the matter of individual taste entered somewhat into the
matter. It has been fairly well proven that location enters largely into
this matter, and that nests in wild regions, where birds of prey, etc.,
abound, are smaller at the top and have a more decided neck than those
in the trees of home lawns and orchard. Of the many nests that I have
found and handled or else observed closely with a glass, the majority
have been quite open at the top like the one pictured, and the only one
with a narrow and funnel-like opening came from a wayside elm on the
edge of a dense wood.
“The female seems to be weaver-in-chief, using both claw and bill,
though I have seen the male carry her material. It is asserted that
Orioles will weave gayly coloured worsteds into their nests. This I very
much doubt, or if they do, I believe it is for lack of something more
suitable. I have repeatedly fastened varicoloured bunches of soft linen
twine, carpet-thread, flosses, and the like under the bark of trees
frequented by Orioles, and with one exception, it has been the more
sombre tints that were selected, though I am told that nests are found
made of very bright colours.
“In the exceptional case a long thread of scarlet linen floss was taken
and woven into the nest for about half its length, the remainder hanging
down; but on resuming my watch the next day, I found that the weaver had
left the half-finished task and crossed the lawn to another tree.
Whether it was owing to the presence of red squirrels close by, or that
the red thread had been a subject for domestic criticism and dissension,
we may not know.
“Be this as it may, in spite of the bright hues of the parent birds and
the hanging shape of the nest that is never concealed by a branch upon
which it is saddled, like the home of so many birds, an Oriole’s nest is
exceedingly difficult to locate unless one has noticed the trips to and
fro in the building process; but once the half-dozen white, darkly
etched and spotted eggs it contains hatch out, the vociferous youngsters
at once call attention to the spot and make their whereabouts known, in
spite of sky cradle and carefully adjusted leaf umbrellas.
“If their parents bring them food, they squeal (yes, that is the only
word for it); if they are left alone, they do likewise. Their baby
voices can be heard above the wind, and it is only either at night or
during a heavy shower, when a parent would naturally be supposed to be
upon the nest, that they are silent.
“As an adult, the Oriole lives on rather mixed diet and has a great love
of honey; but of course as a parent he is, with his sharp beak, a great
provider of animal food for his home, and to his credit must be placed a
vast number of injurious tree-top insects that escape the notice of less
agile birds.
“Complaints are frequently heard of his propensity for opening pods and
eating young peas, piercing the throats of trumpet-shaped flowers for
the honey, and in the autumn, before the southward migration, siphoning
grape and plum juice by means of this same slender, pointed bill.
“Personally, I have never lost peas through his appetite for green
vegetables, though I have had the entire floral output of an old
trumpet-vine riddled bud and blossom; and I have often stood and scolded
them from under the boughs of a Spitzenburgh apple tree, amid the
blossoms of which they were rummaging,—perhaps for insects, but also
scattering the rosy blossoms right and left with torn and bruised
petals. Powell, in _The Independent_, writes feelingly of this trait of
the Oriole, thus:—
“‘An Oriole is like a golden shuttle in the foliage of the trees, but he
is the incarnation of mischief. That is just the word for it. If there
is anything possible to be destroyed, the Oriole likes to tear it up.
“‘He wastes a lot of string in building his nest. He is pulling off
apple blossoms now, possibly eating a few petals. By and by he will pick
holes in bushels of grapes, and in plum season he will let the wasps and
hornets into the heart of every Golden Abundance plum on your favourite
tree. . . . Yet the saucy scamp is so beautiful that he is
tolerated—and he does kill an enormous lot of insects. There is a
swinging nest just over there above the blackberry bushes. It is
wonderfully woven and is a cradle as well as a house. I should like to
have been brought up in such a homestead.’
“It seems as if the Oriole must be a descendant of one of the brilliant
birds that inhabited North America in by-gone days of tropic heat and
that has stayed on from a matter of hereditary association; for in the
nesting season it is to be found from Florida and Texas up to New
Brunswick and the Saskatchewan country and westward to the Rockies,
beyond which this type is replaced by Bullock’s Oriole, of much similar
colouring save that it has more orange on the sides of the head, and the
white wing-patch is larger.
“But however much the Baltimore Oriole loves his native land, the
climate and the exigencies of travel make his stay in it brief; for he
does not appear until there is some protection of foliage and he starts
southward toward his winter home in Central and South America often
before a single leaf has fallen.