BALTIMORE ORIOLE.
Perhaps the Baltimore oriole is best known, not being confined to the city whose name it bears. It came by its name very much as many other birds came by their names and will continue to come by them. About 1628 Lord Baltimore, on an important visit to America, heard a chatter in the top of a maple, and looking up beheld the colors of his own livery, black and yellow. The colors were animated and flitted from place to place, at last seeming to laugh at the Englishman who had come so far from home to find his coat of arms out of reach. Baltimore recognized the bird as an aristocrat, and bestowed upon it his own name on the spot. And a lord the oriole is to this day, black and orange in color, varying in tint with age and season of the year. New clothes, whether on birds or people, fade with wear and sunshine, and lose the luster of newness.
Everybody knows the oriole: you can't make a mistake. That is, you know the male; you may not be so certain of the female and young, for these are always duller of color, more olive, and without the bright black of the male. Moreover, the young male orioles dress very much like their sisters until they are a year or two old, when they dress like a lord.
A neighbor of ours was sure she had discovered a new species hanging their nest under the awning of a window. Both birds were dull yellow, exactly similar in size and color. There was no mistaking the oriole's nest, however; and when we went to see we found the male to be an immature only, mating, as is their custom, the second year, before his best clothes arrived.
The Baltimore oriole attaches its nest or hammock to twigs pretty well up out of reach, and weaves the same of grasses and string, or horsehairs, or all combined. Some of the strings and hairs are very long, and are passed back and forth in open-work fabric, crazy-quilt fashion, and really very beautiful. The cradles swing with every passing breeze, suggesting the origin of the Indian lullaby song, "Rock-a-Bye Baby, in the Treetop." The eggs are four or five in number, bluish white, with many and various markings in brown. These are laid on a soft bed of wool or other suitable material. No wind can blow the young from the nest, though sorry accidents do sometimes happen to them. We have found them caught by the toes in the meshes of the nest, helplessly suspended on the outside, thus earning the name of "hang-bird" in a particular case. Not so very different from the Baltimore is the Bullock oriole, which was also named for an English gentleman who discovered the gay fellow up in a tree, laughing at him. There is less black on the head and neck of the Bullock than on the Baltimore, but the two relatives are alike in habits and manners.
The hooded oriole differs from both the others in the fact that he wears a hood or cowl of yellow, falling over the face like a mask. Perhaps the bill is more slender and decurved than in the Bullock.
The orchard oriole differs from the others in lacking the bright orange or yellow with the black of his dress. His bright chestnut breast, however, with the pointed bill and familiar manners, distinguish him as a member of the family. The nest is more compact than that of the others, woven sometimes of green grasses, which mature into sweet-smelling hay, retaining the green tint, which helps to hide its exact location in the foliage where it is placed.
To know one member of the oriole family is to know them all in a sense, and to know them is to love them.