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The blue-bird with his azure plumes, the thrush clad all in brown, the robin jerking his spasmodic throat, the oriole drifting like a flake of fire, the jolly bobolink and his happy mate, the mocking-bird imitating the notes of all, the red-bird with his one sweet trill, and the busy little wren, are all making the trees in our front yard ring with their glad song.
And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present.
"How about Madame Oriole; does she regret the lover of last year?" "Very good, Monsieur. You are daily recovering your wit. And you used to be very witty when you were not making extravagant love." "A man does not weep when he loves and the object of his love simulates kindness." "I should like to test this love," reflectively. "Test it, Diane; only test it!" He was all eagerness.
Most inferior are our own abilities in using eyes, nose, and ears, when compared with the same functions in birds and animals. Eyes and noses are important keys to the bright colours of birds and comparative sombreness of hairy-coated creatures. Take a dog and an oriole as good examples of the two extremes.
The oriole builds a nest unlike the robin's nest. Each is qualified in its own work. We know that these birds would be sorely handicapped, and would probably be downright failures in providing nests in season for eggs, if each were required to work to plans and specifications of the other bird's nest.
Here all was calcite crystal heavily massed in various forms, and a harmony of blue and brown, with half a dozen round, unbroken, perfect geodes hanging from the ceiling like oriole nests.
Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of nightingales soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front.
Then, indeed, she had been reciprocally explicit in regard not only to them and certain personal characteristics of theirs, which she pointed out as fundamental, but in regard to any newspaper which should deliberately call itself an "Oriole."
Across the pasture I hear the rich voice of an oriole stopping his caterpillar hunting long enough to trill a round phrase or two from the apple-tree bough. A flock of chickadees, old and young, comes through, nervously active in their hunting and with voices in which there is a tang of the coming autumn. Up in the pines a blue jay clamors with the same clarion ring in his tones.
Magpie, I don't want any interference between my husband and me, and I will not have it," says Mrs. Oriole, with her little round eyes flashing with indignation. "Don't put yourself in a passion, my dear; the more you talk, the more sure I am that your nervous system is running down, or you wouldn't forget good manners in this way.