what questionable. He could never sally forth
without insult. The golden robins, especially, would chase him as far
as I could follow with my eye, making him duck clumsily to avoid their
importunate bills. I do not believe, however, that he robbed any nests
hereabouts, for the refuse of the gas-works, which, in our free-and-easy
community, is allowed to poison the river, supplied him with dead
alewives in abundance. I used to watch him making his periodical visits
to the salt-marshes and coming back with a fish in his beak to his young
savages, who, no doubt, like it in that condition which makes it savory
to the Kanakas and other corvine races of men.

(1) See Rousseau's _La Nouvelle Heloise._

Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have seen seven males
flashing about the garden at once. A merry crew of them swing their
hammocks from the pendulous boughs. During one of these later years,
when the canker-worms stripped our elms as bare as winter, these birds
went to the trouble of rebuilding their unroofed nests, and chose for
the purpose trees which are safe from those swarming vandals, such as
the ash and the button-wood. One year a pair (disturbed, I suppose,
elsewhere) built a second next in an elm within a few yards of the
house. My friend, Edward E. Hale, told me once that the oriole rejected
from his web all strands of brilliant color, and I thought it a striking
example of that instinct of concealment noticeable in many birds, though
it should seem in this instance that the nest was amply protected by its
position from all marauders but owls and squirrels. Last year, however,
I had the fullest proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken. A pair of orioles
built on the lowest trailer of a weeping elm, which hung within ten feet
of our drawing-room window, and so low that I could reach it from the
ground. The nest was wholly woven and felted with ravellings of woollen
carpet in which scarlet predominated. Would the same thing have happened
in the woods? Or did the nearness of a human dwelling perhaps give the
birds a greater feeling of security? They are very bold, by the way, in
quest of cordage, and I have often watched them stripping the fibrous
bark from a honeysuckle growing over the very door. But, indeed, all
my birds look upon me as if I were a mere tenant at will, and they
were landlords. With shame I confess it, I have been bullied even by a
hummingbird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its lichens,