evidently making up
her mind that the case was not hopeless. After a little more
maneuvering, and amid the happy, reassuring calls of her mate, she
entered the nest cavity and remained, and I was as well pleased as was
her mate.

No owls disturbed them this time, and the brood of young birds was
brought off in due season. In July a second brood of four was
successfully reared and sent forth on their career.

The oriole nests in many kinds of trees--oaks, maples, apple-trees,
elms--but her favorite is the elm. She chooses the end of one of the
long drooping branches where a group of small swaying twigs affords her
suitable support. It is the most unlikely place imaginable for any but a
pendent nest, woven to half a dozen or more slender, vertical twigs,
and swaying freely in the wind. Few nests are so secure, so hidden, and
so completely sheltered from the rains by the drooping leaves above and
around it. It is rarely discoverable except from directly beneath it. I
think a well-built oriole's nest would sustain a weight of eight or ten
pounds before it would be torn from its moorings. They are also very
partial to the ends of branches that swing low over the highway. One May
I saw two female orioles building their nests twenty or twenty-five feet
above our State Road, where automobiles and other vehicles passed nearly
every minute all the day. An oriole's nest in a remote field far from
highways and dwellings is a rare occurrence.

Birds of different species differ as widely in skill in nest-building as
they do in song. From the rude platform of dry twigs and other coarse
material of the cuckoo, to the pendent, closely woven pouch of the
oriole, the difference in the degree of skill displayed is analogous to
the difference between the simple lisp of the cedar-bird, or the little
tin whistle of the "chippie," and the golden notes of the wood thrush,
or the hilarious song of the bobolink.

Real castles in the air are the nests of the orioles; no other nests are
better hidden or apparently more safe from the depredations of crows and
squirrels. To start the oriole's nest successfully is quite an
engineering feat. The birds inspect the branches many times before they
make a decision. When they have decided on the site, the mother bird
brings her first string or vegetable fiber and attaches it to a twig by
winding it around and around many times, leaving one or both ends
hanging free. I have nests where these foundation