“Among the birds many of the best vocalists are choir singers, as it were. We hear their voices first, and from hearing them desire to know and name the singers. The Thrushes belong to the first group. Others there are who come on the stage in brilliant costume; we see them first, then desire to hear them sing, and afterward remember them as pleasing both to eye and ear. These are the gentlemen of the Opera, and four of them made the garden and orchard their music-hall last summer and I do not doubt will do so again. In fact the Goldfinches have never left, but a flock in sober winter suits have fed at the lunch-counter on the sunflower heads and fluttered over the weed seeds in the fields all winter.
“The Baltimore Oriole is the first of the quartet to settle down to family life late in May. The Rose-breast follows him closely. But the Tanager waits for the heavy leafage of June to cover his brilliant colours while, for some reason not yet understood, the American Goldfinch keeps his bachelor freedom longer than any bird except the Cedar Waxwing. And though he wears his handsome yellow wedding-clothes from late April, he waits until he has feasted well on dandelion-down and the best grass seeds before he ceases to rove and takes to a bush, high maple, or other tree, to locate his soft nest made of moss and grasses and lined with thistle-down.
THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE
How falls it, Oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendour through our northern sky?
At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?
Or did an orange tulip flaked with black,
In some forgotten ages back,
Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,