Another fact about robin music may be of interest to those who have not observed it. In the early spring these birds are extremely lyrical, that being their season of courtship; then will follow a few weeks of comparative silence--the time when there are little ones in need of parental care. At this period the husbands, it would seem, are either too busy or too wary to sing a great deal. But now note: When the youngsters have flown from the nest and are able to take care of themselves, the silence in robindom is again broken, and there is a flood-tide of melody from early morning till eventide. The second lyrical period lasts until another nest has been built and another clutch of eggs has been hatched, when the choralists again relapse into comparative silence. Since coming back to Ohio, I imagine that the eastern robins are better singers than their western relatives. Their voices, to my ear, are clearer and more ringing, less apt to break into a squeak at the top of their register, and there is more variety of expression as well as greater facility in managing the technique. I think this is not all fancy, yet I would not speak with the assurance of the dogmatist. In the good Jayhawker state the orchard orioles are more abundant than they are in the eastern and northeastern part of the state of Ohio. Indeed, the range of this species is more southerly than that of their congeners, the Baltimore orioles. In their proper latitude no birds, or at least few of them, are more lavish of their melody than the orchard orioles. What a ringing voice the oriole possesses! His song has a saucy note of challenge running through it, and also a human intonation that makes it rarely attractive. All day long the male sings his cheery solos, scarcely pausing for breath or food, now sitting on the topmost twig of a dead apple tree in the orchard, now amid the screening foliage of a maple in the yard, and anon on the other side of the street in a stately cottonwood. But where is that modest little personage, his wife? She is seldom heard, and almost as seldom seen. It is really remarkable--her gift of concealment. When she builds her nest is a mystery. It is often so deftly hidden that you would not be likely to find it in a long hunt. In the spring of 1898 a pair of orchard orioles took up their residence in the trees about my house, the male singing his brisk overtures, the female seen only at flitting intervals and never heard. Watch as I would, I could not surprise her laying the timbers of her cottage, which I felt sure was being built somewhere in the trees. Indeed, I did not discover it until autumn came, long after the orioles, old and young, had taken flight to a balmier clime, and the trees were stripped of their leaves, when, lo! it appeared in plain view on one of the trees on the opposite side of the street, the very place where I had not thought of looking for it.