The Baltimore orioles as a rule are not so secretive; yet during the summer of 1898 a pair of these firebirds led me a fruitless chase. Their secret was not divulged until the leaves had fallen the next autumn, when there the nest hung in the midst of a tall cottonwood in my back yard close to the house. Lord Baltimore and his mate usually suspend their nests on the outer branches of the trees, where they are not hard to discover, but this pair did not follow the common formula, for the nest was placed in the thickest part of the foliage, so that it was impossible to see it from the ground until the branches were bare. Of all the malaperts of birddom none excel and few equal the white-eyed vireo for volubility and downright audacity. All his songs--and he has quite a respectable list of them--seem to be either a protest or a challenge; a protest against your intrusion into his precincts, a challenge to find him and his nest if you can. Again and again in Kansas I crept into their bushy coverts just for the purpose of receiving a sound scolding. Such a berating did they give me, telling me of all my faults and foibles, that I certainly ought to remain humble all the rest of my days. A half dozen viragoes could not have done better--that is, worse. They would flit about in the bushes above my head, their little white eyes gleaming with fire, and call me all the names they could lay their tongues to. I wonder whether the white-eyes have a dictionary of epithets. Nature has done an odd thing in making the white-eyed vireo.