“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, Desire unspeakably to be a bird? —Edgar Fawcett. “The Baltimore Oriole should be first mentioned, for his voice is that of the bugler that heralds actual spring, the long-expected, long-delayed mellow period, distinct from the almanac spring, that, when it once comes to us of the middle and north country, is quickly absorbed by the ardour of summer herself. Also is this Oriole the gloriously illuminated initial letter wrought in ruddy gold and black pigments heading the chapter that records the season; and when we see him high in a tree against a light tracery of fresh foliage, we know in very truth that not only is winter over, that the treacherous snow-squalls of April are past, but that May is working day and night to complete the task allotted. “For as the Indian waited for the blooming of the dogwood, _Cornus florida_, before planting his maize, so does the prudent gardener wait for the first call of the Oriole before she trusts her cellar-wintered geraniums and lemon balms once more to the care of Mother Earth.