My white cedar does not wear any nest in her hair, but each autumn her charm is enhanced by the beautiful green oriole in her branches. In autumn the fat green berries have grown golden and juicy, and the oriole comes to feast upon them. He really has no right to be so near Sydney nowadays, for he is one of the larger birds, which have been driven back by the advance of the city; but somehow or other, in the mysterious bird way, he learned of my white cedar, and each year he comes to spend a month or so in the wilderness, feasting on the berries, and in between meals filling the autumn day with his lovely, clear ringing song. He is one of the lucky birds, whose voice matches his form in beauty. For he is, indeed, a beautiful bird, with his olive green back, creamy breast streaked with black, and bright red eye and bill. He is big enough, too, to show up in the landscape, and towards the end of his stay, when the cedar is nearly leafless, he makes a lovely note of colour on the bare branches against the blue sky. [Illustration: _The beautiful green Oriole_] But he has rivals in the wilderness--many rivals, both in voice and appearance. I am not sure that the blue jays are not more lovely to look at. Their silvery bodies and black faces are not so gay, of course, but they are slim and slender, and they float through the tree-tops with wonderful grace. They come in flocks to the wilderness during the winter, and it is a joy to watch them swaying in the tree-tops, then darting suddenly down to catch an insect on the wing, and up again to their swinging perch. Pity ’tis their voice has no beauty, but is just a querulous squawking note. Handsome creatures, too, are the dollar-birds which visit the wilderness every year and drift amongst the tall tree-tops, displaying the silvery dollars on their wings against a blue-and-brown background. But their voices!--a small boy compared them to a lot of mad frogs, and the description is not inapt. Fortunately for our ears these harsh-voiced birds are short-stayed visitors, but many of the birds that linger in the wilderness are true singers. As I write the air is filled with the glorious song of the butcher-birds, which stay with us all through the late summer and autumn and sometimes come in the spring. I have heard all the old-world songbirds--the nightingale and the lark, the blackbird and the thrush--heard and loved them all. But for sheer beauty and volume I know no bird whose voice compares with the butcher-bird’s, and I think it is a sin that he should be so named.