. True bird stories from my note-books . in his dearly beloved golden goose. THE SAUCY OKIOLE I The Baltimore oriole is so gorgeous in dress,so charming of voice, and so strongly individualin his ways, that his modest Uttle spouse slipsthrough life by his side almost unnoticed. Yetshe is a not unworthy mate ; her dress, thoughsubdued, is more pleasing than his, her individ-uality is quite as marked, and she, too, can sing. A pair of orioles that spent one winter in myBird Room were very entertaining, and the littlemadam was the most saucy creature I ever sawin feathers. She was a ridiculous ob
. True bird stories from my note-books . in his dearly beloved golden goose. THE SAUCY OKIOLE I The Baltimore oriole is so gorgeous in dress,so charming of voice, and so strongly individualin his ways, that his modest Uttle spouse slipsthrough life by his side almost unnoticed. Yetshe is a not unworthy mate ; her dress, thoughsubdued, is more pleasing than his, her individ-uality is quite as marked, and she, too, can sing. A pair of orioles that spent one winter in myBird Room were very entertaining, and the littlemadam was the most saucy creature I ever sawin feathers. She was a ridiculous object as toplumage, being featherless on the head and with-out a sign of a tail; but never was an oriolelong depressed by a little matter of that kind;she was just as self-possessed and as dignified asif she had been the queen of the whole featheredworld. Her first effort in my room was to establishher right to a bath whenever and wherever shechose to take it. The very first morning, whilethe older residents were bathing, and every bath-. BALTIMORE ORIOLE THE SAUCY ORIOLE 81 tub was occupied, she made up her mind to goin. Nothing daunted by size, she picked outthe biggest bird in the room to dispossess. Itwas a blue jay, whose bathing-dish was on thefloor. A droll figure she made when she went downto drive him out. She was not a quarter hissize, and looked — without a tail — about as bigas a wren. She aUghted on the edge of his dish;but when the big fellow stopped splashing andstood up in the water, looking quite able to eather, his warlike crest rising and his large eyesfixed upon the intruder, she did not quite dare toinsist. Her next choice was more fortunate. She wentto the table where a BrazUian cardinal, consider-ably bigger than herself, was bathing, drove himaway, and stepped into the water herself. She began her bath like any other bird, bythrusting her head in the water, but after one dipshe lifted it high and flapped her wings vigor-ously, getting so wet that when
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1903
