of his pleasure, and she answers, I am sorry to say, in rather a
complaining tone; but the match is soon made. Though they are not the
sweetest-tempered birds possible, they are as quick to aid as to quarrel
with their neighbors.

"Their bright colors seem rather out of place in the family which
contains also our sombre Blackbirds, but before the leaves have fallen
both kinds of Orioles and their families start for Mexico and Central
America, where such tropical hues seem more in keeping, and where many
members of the family are quite as brilliant as those we see here."
"There goes another Oriole!" cried Nat. "What a beauty, too! I suppose
he has a nest high up in one of these elms over the road."

"Very likely, for in autumn, when the trees are bare, I have sometimes
counted a dozen Orioles' nests in this very row of elms."

"Look, Uncle Roy! Look over in that pasture! What are all those black
and brown birds walking round after the cows, just as chickens do?" said
Dodo.

"Those are members of the Blackbird family called Cowbirds, because they
follow the cows as they feed, in order to pick up worms and bugs that
are shaken out of the grass. But I am sorry to say that these birds are
the vagabonds of Birdland--the tramps I told you of."


The Baltimore Oriole

Length seven and a half inches.