Orchard Orioles are masters in the art of nest-building. The nest, a beautiful basket-like structure about three inches across and the same in length, is attached to half-upright or horizontal branches. Usually it is half pensile, though some are wholly pendent. It is always made of blades of long, slender grasses woven together in a most wonderful manner and lined with plant fiber and feathers. As the grass is invariably used while fresh and green, the nest is of a more or less green hue at all times, and consequently difficult to detect among the thick foliage. The four or five bluish-white eggs are spotted with a purplish color. At first the nestlings are fed on tiny insects and later on beetles and grasshoppers. The number of noxious insects a pair of these birds will destroy in a season is almost incredible. Addie L. Booker. [Illustration: PRAIRIE WARBLER. (Dendroica discolor.) About Life-size. FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.] THE PRAIRIE WARBLER. (_Dendroica discolor._) This beautiful little Warbler cannot fail to awaken an interest in bird life in the mind of any person whose privilege it is to observe it in its chosen haunts. These are the shrubby pasture lands and the open woods of the eastern United States. It is more common in barren, sandy places of the Atlantic coast, where it seems to find an insect food suited to its taste. It not infrequently visits orchards, when in bloom, especially those in retired localities. Wilson, who wrote enthusiastically of the Prairie Warbler, says: “They seem to prefer open plains and thinly-wooded tracts, and have this singularity in their manners, that they are not easily alarmed, and search among the leaves the most leisurely of any of the tribe I have yet met with, seeming to examine every blade of grass and every leaf, uttering at short intervals a feeble chirr.”