A YOUNG Oriole was rescued from the water where it had evidently just
fallen from the nest. When taken home it proved a ready pet and was given
full freedom of the place. Some weeks later a nestling from another brood
was placed in the same cage with the other. The newcomer had not yet
learned to feed himself, and like a baby as it was, cried incessantly for
food. The first captive though but a fledgling himself, proceeded to feed
the orphan with all the tender solicitude of a parent.
"It was irresistably cunning and heartsome, too," says the narrator, W. L.
Dawson, in the _Bulletin_, "to see the bird select with thoughtful kindness
a morsel of food and hop over toward the clamoring stranger and drop it in
his mouth, looking at it afterward with an air as much as to say, 'there,
baby, how did you like that?' This trait was not shown by a chance
exhibition, but became a regular habit, and was still followed when the
older bird had attained to fly catching. It upset all ones notions about
instinct and made one think of a Golden Rule for birds."
----