that he jerks about when he sings. He skulks under bushes, and pounces on his creeping prey like a little feathered wild-cat.
If the bluebird is the sapphire of the air, there is no jewel at all to compare with the glowing orange of the Baltimore oriole. He is a cousin of the blackbirds, as you might know from his velvet black wings and tail, and his flute-like whistle. His olive-backed, lemon-breasted mate sings, too, a lovely alto to his clear soprano. They sing the dearest duet you ever could hear. The orchard oriole has a black coat and hat, too, but his vest is a reddish brown, and his wings and tail are barred with white. He and his dull, olive and yellow mate sing duets, too, in richer, less whistling voices than the Baltimore. If you are not sure of the orchard orioles look for their pretty, sky-blue shoes and stockings.
No blackbird is shy, you may be sure. The orioles always fly about in plain sight, and talk freely of themselves and their affairs. A hot-headed, blustering little fellow is the oriole, noisy, restless, talkative; always whistling gaily like a happy school boy, in sun, wind and rain. He has scolding notes for meddlesome neighbors, too. The orchard oriole is a good policeman. When he sounds his harsh, alarm note: "Chack!" every bird in the neighborhood knows it is time to skurry to cover.
If the doctor hadn't had a cow, and a pasture lot for her with a pond in it, and low elder and hazel and briar bushes around it, he wouldn't have had some of the blackbirds nesting near him. A hedge of thorny, ruddy-flowered japonica was between the garden and the pasture. Often a gay flash of black and white, with a yellow patch on the back of the neck, tumbled up out of the meadow onto that hedge. It was the bobolink. He sang and swung and flirted his wings and tail. He chattered and gossiped and whistled. He just bubbled over with high spirits and innocent fun. Up and down the scale he sang, like a musical acrobat on a trapeze. But most of the time he just bubbled out his own saucy name.
"Bob-o-link! Bob-o-link! Spink, spank, spink!" Dear little rascal. He had no trouble at all in winning a wife!
In the cat-tails and rushes about the pond was always a colony of red-winged blackbirds. Glossy fellows the males were, in jetty coats with red, gold-bordered shoulder knots. They strutted and danced and jumped and whistled "Bob-o-lee!" or, as some bird lovers understand: "Con-quer-ee!" It can hardly be called singing, this explosive gurgle.
