THE HOODED ORIOLE. (_Icterus cucullatus._) Only a very limited portion of the United States is beautified by the presence of the bright colored Hooded Oriole. The North has the richly plumaged Baltimore oriole for a short time each year, but only the far southeastern part of Texas is enlivened by this graceful, active bird of our illustration, which is “so full of song that the woods are filled with music all the day.” Both of these birds seem hardly to belong to the North, where somber colors seem more in harmony with a severer climate. The Hooded Oriole does not attempt the journey and when we see the Baltimore, “A winged flame that darts and burns, Dazzling where’er his bright wing turns,” in our northern woods we cannot but ask, with the poet, “How falls it, Oriole, thou hast come to fly In tropic splendor through our northern sky? At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?” The Hooded Oriole has a very narrow range, reaching from Texas southward through eastern Mexico to Honduras, and during our northern winters it has the Baltimore as an associate. It is a social bird and frequents the home of man. One writer relating his experience with this Oriole says: “They were continually appearing about the thatched roof of our houses and the arbors adjoining for insects; they were more familiar than any of the other Orioles about the ranch.” It not only delights man by its song and beautiful coloring, but its presence is also beneficial, for it destroys countless adult insects and their larvæ.