May brings all the flowers at once,
Teased by rains and kissed by suns;
Now the meadows white and gold;
Now the lambs leap in the fold.
May is wreathed with virgin white;
Glad May dances all the night;
May laughs, rolling ’mong the flowers,
Careless of the wintry hours.
May’s storms turn to sunny rain,
And, when Iris springs again,
All the angels clap their hands,
Singing in their seraph bands.
—Walter Thornbury, “The Twelve Brothers.”
Now, shrilleth clear each several bird his note,
The Halcyon charms the wave that knows no gale,
About our eaves the swallow tells her tale,
Along the river banks the swan, afloat,
And down the woodland glades the nightingale.
Now tendrils curl and earth bursts forth anew—
Now shepherds pipe and fleecy flocks are gay—
Now sailors sail, and Bacchus gets his due—
Now wild birds chirp and bees their toil pursue—
Sing, poet, thou—and sing thy best for May!
—William M. Hardinge, “Spring.”
AUDUBON’S ORIOLE.
(_Icterus audubonii_.)
The name oriole is from the French word oriol, which is a corruption of
the Latin word aureolus, meaning golden. The name was originally applied
to a vire, but is now used in a much wider sense and includes a number
of birds.
The true orioles are birds of the Old World and are closely related to
the thrushes. It is said that no fewer than twenty species from Asia and
Africa have been described.
The orioles of America belong to a very different group of birds and are
related to our blackbirds, the bobolink and the meadowlark. All these
birds belong to the family Icteridae, the representatives of which are
confined to the New World.
The genus of orioles (Icterus) contains about forty species, chiefly
natives of Central and South America. The plumage of nearly all the
species is more or less colored with shades of yellow, orange and black.
Audubon’s Oriole, the male of which we illustrate, has a very limited
range, including the “valley of the Lower Rio Grande in Texas and
southward in Mexico to Oaxaca.” It is more common in central and eastern
Mexico than in any other part of its range. In the summer, it only
frequents the denser forests of its Texas home, but during the winter
months it will approach the inhabited regions.
The Mexicans capture these Orioles and offer them for sale. In
captivity, however, they seem to lose their vivacity and will not sing.
“When free their usual song is a prolonged and repeated whistle of
extraordinary mellowness and sweetness, each note varying in pitch from
the preceding.”
It is said that this beautiful bird is frequently called upon to become
the foster parents of the offspring of some of those birds that have
neither the inclination to build their own nests or to raise their own
families. The ingenious nests of the orioles seem to be especially
attractive to these tramp birds which possess parasitic tastes.
The red-eyed cowbird (Callothrus robustus), of the Southern United
States and Central America, seems to be the pest that infests the homes
of Audubon’s Oriole. It has been stated that the majority of the sets of
eggs collected from the nests of this Oriole contain one or more of the
cowbird’s eggs. It is also probable that many of the Oriole’s eggs are
destroyed by the cowbirds as well as by other agencies, and thus, though
the raising of two broods the same season is frequently attempted, the
species is far from abundant.
Regarding the nesting habits of the Audubon’s Oriole, Captain Charles
Bendire says, “The nest of this Oriole is usually placed in mesquite
trees, in thickets and open woods, from six to fourteen feet from the
ground. It is a semipensile structure, woven of fine, wire-like grass
used while still green and resembles those of the hooded and orchard
orioles, which are much better known. The nest is firmly attached, both
on the top and sides, to small branches and growing twigs and, for the
size of the bird, it appears rather small. One now before me measures
three inches in depth inside by about the same in inner diameter. The
rim of the nest is somewhat contracted to prevent the eggs from being
thrown out during high winds. The inner lining consists of somewhat
finer grass tops, which still retain considerable strength and are even
now, when perfectly dry, difficult to break. Only a single nest of those
found was placed in a bunch of Spanish moss and this was suspended
within reach of the ground; the others were attached to small twigs.”
[Illustration: ]
The number of eggs vary from two to five and “sets of one or two eggs of
this Oriole, with two or three cowbird’s eggs, seem to be most
frequently found, some of the first named eggs being thrown out to make
room.” The eggs are ovate in form and the general color varies from
white with a bluish cast to white with a grayish cast and in some
instances a purple shade predominates. The markings vary greatly both in
color and form. They may be either thread-like, in streaks or in
blotches. In color they may be various shades of either brown, purple or
lavender.
The food of Audubon’s Oriole consists of insects and, to some extent, of
berries and other fruits. Mr. Chark, who studied the habits of this
species in Texas, says that he observed it frequently feeding on the
fruit of the hackberry. He also states that these birds were usually in
pairs and exhibited a retiring disposition, preferring the thick foliage
of the margins of streams rather than that of more open and exposed
places.
Seth Mindwell.