BALTIMORE ORIOLE T HE male of this bird is orange and black, while the female is dull yellowish and gray. They are sociable birds and seem to like the company of mankind, for their nests are, from choice, built as near as possible to houses, often being where they can be reached from windows. As they use a great deal of string in the construction of their nests, children often get amusement by placing bright-colored pieces of yarn where the birds will get them, and watch them weave them into their homes. The song is a clear, querulous, varied whistle or warble, and the call is a plaintive whistle. The nest is a pensile structure, often hanging eight or ten inches below the supporting rim, and swaying to and fro with every breeze. They lay five or six white eggs, curiously scrawled with blackish brown. These birds breed east of the Rockies, north to New Brunswick and Manitoba, and winter in Central America. -Bird Guide. LAST NIGHT L AST night the nightingale woke me, It sang in the golden moonlight, I opened my window so gently; I looked on the dreaming dew, And O; the bird, my darling, was singing, Singing of you, of you. I think of you in the day time, I dream of you by night, I wake and would you were here, love, I hear a low breath in the lime tree, O! think not I can forget you; I see you in all around me— The stream, the night, the wood, The flowers that slumber so gently, The stars above the blue, Heaven itself, my darling, Is praying, praying for you! -From the Swedish, by Theophile Marsials. AFTER THE RAIN HE rain has ceased, and in my room TH The sunshine pours an airy flood; And on the church's dizzy vane The ancient Cross is bathed in blood. From out the dripping ivy-leaves, And now it glimmers in the sun, -Thomas Bailey Aldrich |