Perhaps the Baltimore oriole is best known, not being confined to
the city whose name it bears. It came by its name very much as
many other birds came by their names and will continue to come by
them. About 1628 Lord Baltimore, on an important visit to America,
heard a chatter in the top of a maple, and looking up beheld the
colors of his own livery, black and yellow. The colors were animated
and flitted from place to place, at last seeming to laugh at the
Englishman who had come so far from home to find his coat of arms
out of reach. Baltimore recognized the bird as an aristocrat, and
bestowed upon it his own name on the spot. And a lord the oriole is
to this day, black and orange in color, varying in tint with age and
season of the year. New clothes, whether on birds or people, fade
with wear and sunshine, and lose the luster of newness.
Everybody knows the oriole: you can't make a mistake. That is, you
know the male; you may not be so certain of the female and young, for
these are always duller of color, more olive, and without the bright
black of the male. Moreover, the young male orioles dress very much
like their sisters until they are a year or two old, when they dress
like a lord.
A neighbor of ours was sure she had discovered a new species hanging
their nest under the awning of a window. Both birds were dull yellow,
exactly similar in size and color. There was no mistaking the
oriole's nest, however; and when we went to see we found the male to
be an immature only, mating, as is their custom, the second year,
before his best clothes arrived.
The Baltimore oriole attaches its nest or hammock to twigs pretty
well up out of reach, and weaves the same of grasses and string, or
horsehairs, or all combined. Some of the strings and hairs are very
long, and are passed back and forth in open-work fabric, crazy-quilt
fashion, and really very beautiful. The cradles swing with every
passing breeze, suggesting the origin of the Indian lullaby song,
"Rock-a-Bye Baby, in the Treetop." The eggs are four or five in
number, bluish white, with many and various markings in brown. These
are laid on a soft bed of wool or other suitable material. No wind
can blow the young from the nest, though sorry accidents do sometimes
happen to them. We have found them caught by the toes in the meshes
of the nest, helplessly suspended on the outside, thus earning the
name of "hang-bird" in a particular case. Not so very different
from the Baltimore is the Bullock oriole, which was also named for
an English gentleman who discovered the gay fellow up in a tree,
laughing at him. There is less black on the head and neck of the
Bullock than on the Baltimore, but the two relatives are alike in
habits and manners.
The hooded oriole differs from both the others in the fact that he
wears a hood or cowl of yellow, falling over the face like a mask.
Perhaps the bill is more slender and decurved than in the Bullock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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