Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

Here in southern California we are best acquainted with the Arizona hooded, which comes to us from Mexico as early as March or April and remains until autumn. We have also the Bullock, and have watched both at nesting-time. None of the orioles is gregarious. They come in single file, never in flocks, and go the same way, often a solitary bachelor or maid lingering behind. When they come in spring it is always the male first, two or three days ahead of his mate. And only one male appears first on the grounds, who makes known his presence exultantly, as if declaring, "I've come, see me!" The oranges are ripe about this time, and the coat of the gay bird is quite in keeping with the prevailing color. One associates any of the orioles, save the orchard, with oranges and buttercups and dandelions and summer goldenrod.

These birds love the habitation of man, and where encouraged and tempted by fruits, remain about our homes by choice, returning each year to the old homestead. We have had orioles return to our home four consecutive seasons, weaving the new nests on to last year's, like a lean-to, sewing the two together with threads. Three pairs of these double-apartment nests are swinging from a single gum-tree twenty-five feet above the driveway.

Often a pair of orioles will suspend their hammocks under the cloth awnings of windows, if provision is made for them. A strong string or little rope, put in and out of the cloth, close up under the corner, will tempt them. We have not known an oriole to pierce firm, untransparent texture of any sort, with her needle beak. On this account we tempt her with the rope.

If corn leaves were high enough, the orioles would doubtless take them for nesting-places in their season. Not so very different from corn is our banana leaf, only a good deal broader and higher. It closes in the middle of the day like a corn leaf, opening again at night or with the sunset.

When the orioles first come to us in the spring they examine all the banana leaves. They soon make up their minds that these are either too young and tender or too old and tattered for a nesting site, and resort to the trees. Any tree will answer, but a favorite is the blue-gum, whose extreme height offers inducements. Though why the birds should take height into consideration we do not know, for later, when the leaves have matured, they select a low banana stock with its broad leaf, so low the hand can reach it. It may be they learn confidence as the season advances.

We have seen no nests with us made of other material than the light yellow fiber which the birds strip from the edge of the palm-leaves, the identical leaf of which the big broad fans are made. When the leaf is green it drips small threads from the edges of its midribs, which you see in the fan as thick grooves. These threads the orioles may be seen pulling out or off any hour in the day if the nest be located in a tree. If they have found a suitable banana leaf they work only in the morning and evening, as the leaf folds up like a book in the daytime, and the sharp apex under which the nest cuddles is difficult to reach.

An oriole works only from below, pushing the thread up, and pulling it down the width of two or three veins away from the first stitch, making a good hold. She first leaves a dozen or twenty threads swinging, after doubling her stitches to make them fast. Then she ties and twists the ends of the threads together at suitable length and width for the inner lining of the hammock; thus fashioning the inner space first and adding to the outside. When the whole is completed, she lines it with soft materials, using but one kind of material in the same lining. The banana-leaf hammock has two openings, back and front, through either of which the birds enter or emerge. As the nest progresses in size the leaf is spread apart, until on completion the thick midrib passes directly over the nest and fixes the shape of the whole like a roof or a tent. It is cool and always swinging, and on the whole is an ideal nursery.

The adaptation of the oriole's feet for clinging and perching is a good thought of nature, else the bird could never weave from below as she does. She sticks her sharp toes through the mesh of the leaf, clinging to a rib while she works.

This custom of beginning on the inside of the nest marks the building instincts of all the hang-birds, for should they reverse the order they would make a mere tangle without inside proportions. It would be impossible to weave from without. As the nest progresses the outer threads are coarser and less closely woven, brought together at certain points of attachment to the twig or the leaf rib, and making a nest the winds might play with, but not steal away.