When the feud of hot and cold
Leaves the autumn woodlands bare;
When the year is getting old,
And flowers are dead, and keen the air;
When the crow has new concern,
And early sounds his raucous note;
And—where the late witch-hazels burn—
The squirrel from a chuckling throat
Tells that one larder’s space is filled,
And tilts upon a towering tree;
And, valiant, quick, and keenly thrilled,
Upstarts the tiny chickadee;
When the sun’s still shortening arc
Too soon night’s shadows dun and gray
Brings on, and fields are drear and dark,
And summer birds have flown away,—
I feel the year’s slow-beating heart,
The sky’s chill prophecy I know;
And welcome the consummate art
Which weaves this spotless shroud of snow!
—Joel Benton, in “Songs of Nature.”
THE HOODED ORIOLE.
(_Icterus cucullatus._)
Only a very limited portion of the United States is beautified by the
presence of the bright colored Hooded Oriole. The North has the richly
plumaged Baltimore oriole for a short time each year, but only the far
southeastern part of Texas is enlivened by this graceful, active bird of
our illustration, which is “so full of song that the woods are filled
with music all the day.” Both of these birds seem hardly to belong to
the North, where somber colors seem more in harmony with a severer
climate. The Hooded Oriole does not attempt the journey and when we see
the Baltimore,
“A winged flame that darts and burns,
Dazzling where’er his bright wing turns,”
in our northern woods we cannot but ask, with the poet,
“How falls it, Oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendor through our northern sky?
At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?”
The Hooded Oriole has a very narrow range, reaching from Texas southward
through eastern Mexico to Honduras, and during our northern winters it
has the Baltimore as an associate. It is a social bird and frequents the
home of man. One writer relating his experience with this Oriole says:
“They were continually appearing about the thatched roof of our houses
and the arbors adjoining for insects; they were more familiar than any
of the other Orioles about the ranch.”
It not only delights man by its song and beautiful coloring, but its
presence is also beneficial, for it destroys countless adult insects and
their larvæ.
The Hooded Oriole seldom builds its nest higher than from six to twelve
feet above the ground, though in a few instances it has been found as
high as thirty feet. Dr. James C. Merrill, in his Notes on the
Ornithology of Texas, says, “The nests of this bird found here are
perfectly characteristic, and cannot be confounded with those of any
allied species. They are usually found in one of the two following
situations: The first and most frequent is in a bunch of hanging moss,
usually at no great height from the ground; when so placed the nests are
formed almost entirely by hollowing out and matting the moss, with a few
filaments of a dark, hairlike moss as a lining. The second situation is
in a bush growing to a height of about six feet, a nearly bare stem,
throwing out two or three irregular masses of leaves at the top. These
bunches of dark green leaves conceal the nest admirably. It is
constructed of filaments of the hair-like mass just referred to, with a
little Spanish moss, wool, or a few feathers for the lining. They are
rather wide and shallow for orioles’ nests, and though strong they
appear thin and delicate.” Not infrequently the Hooded Oriole builds its
nest in plants called the Spanish bayonet or yucca. In such a situation
the walls are constructed almost entirely of the fibers of the plant
torn from dried leaves. These fibers are tough and the nest walls are
much more durable than when made with moss. Wool or vegetable down may
be used as a lining, but it is not uncommon to find no lining. The
Hooded Oriole is not free from the intrusion of feathered rascals. Major
Bendire says that it “is considerably imposed upon by both the red-eyed
and the dwarf cow-birds, and in a few instances parasitic eggs of both
species are found in the same nest.”
[Illustration: HOODED ORIOLE.
(Icterus cucullatus).
⅔ Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]