Brilliancy of plumage, sweetness of song, and food habits to which no exception can be taken are some of the striking characteristics of the Baltimore oriole ([fig. 12]). In summer this species is found throughout the northern half of the United States east of the Great Plains, and is welcomed and loved in every country home in that broad land. In the Northern States it arrives rather late, and is usually first seen, or heard, foraging amidst the early bloom of the apple trees, where it searches for caterpillars or feeds daintily on the surplus blossoms. Its nest commands hardly less admiration than the beauty of its plumage or the excellence of its song. Hanging from the tip of the outermost bough of a stately elm, it is almost inaccessible, and so strongly fastened as to bid defiance to the elements.
By watching an oriole which has a nest one may see it searching among the smaller branches of some neighboring tree, carefully examining each leaf for caterpillars, and occasionally trilling a few notes to its mate. Observation both in the field and laboratory shows that caterpillars constitute the largest item of its fare. In 113 stomachs they formed 34 per cent of the food, and are eaten in varying quantities during all the months in which the bird remains in this country, although the fewest are eaten in July, when a little fruit is also taken. The other insects consist of beetles, bugs, ants, wasps, grasshoppers, and some spiders. The beetles are principally click beetles, the larvæ of which are among the most destructive insects known; and the bugs include plant and bark lice, both very harmful, but so small and obscure as to be passed over unnoticed by most birds. Ants are eaten mostly in spring, grasshoppers in July and August, and wasps and spiders with considerable regularity throughout the season.
Vegetable matter amounts to only a little more than 10 per cent of the food during the bird's stay in the United States, so that the possibility of the oriole doing much damage to crops is very limited. The bird has been accused of eating peas to a considerable extent, but remains of peas were found in only two stomachs. One writer says that it damages grapes, but none were found. In fact, a few blackberries and cherries comprised the only cultivated fruit detected in the stomachs, the remainder of the vegetable food being wild fruit and a few miscellaneous seeds.
Fig. 12.—Baltimore oriole.
[THE CROW BLACKBIRD, OR GRACKLE.]
(Quiscalus quiscula.)
The crow blackbird ([fig. 13]) or one of its subspecies is a familiar object in all of the States east of the Rocky Mountains. It is a resident throughout the year as far north as southern Illinois, and in summer extends its range into British America. In the Mississippi Valley it is one of the most abundant birds, preferring to nest in the artificial groves and windbreaks near farms instead of the natural "timber" which it formerly used. It breeds also in parks and near buildings, often in considerable colonies. Farther east, in New England, it is only locally abundant, though frequently seen in migration. After July it becomes very rare, or entirely disappears, owing to the fact that it collects in large flocks and retires to some quiet place, where food is abundant and where it can remain undisturbed during the molting season, but in the latter days of August and throughout September it usually reappears in immense numbers before moving southward.