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Hooded Oriole Nesting in Banana Plant at Beverly Hills, California

J. Ewan

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Hooded Oriole Nesting in Banana Plant at Beverly Hills, California.-The use as nesting sites of the native California fan palms ( UashivLgtonia ’ $lifera and W. robusta) by the Hooded Oriole (Zcterus cucullatw) is well known to bird students. However, the use of the garden-grown non-native banana (MzJsa paradisiaca var. sapit-tiumj for that purpose apparently has not been noticed in the literature. The clump of bananas selected for a nest site stood about 15 meters from a house on Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles County, California, in a protected corner of a backyard garden. Mrs. Verna Mills called attention to a nest between the drooping and sheltering halves of the folded blade of a fully mature leaf of the banana. The nest was constructed entirely of palm fibers brought from veteran washingtonias that form a parkway on Canyon Drive. The palm fibers were sewed into the leaf blade, thereby joining the two halves of the banana leaf together, but the nest was not attached to the sturdy midrib. When in use the nest was entirely concealed within the folds of the untorn Ieaf. In contrast to the usual choice of a high position in the leaf-crown of fan palms, this nest was but three meters from the ground. It was removed on November 2, 1928, and is now preserved in the nest collection of the University of Colorado Museum. Have other anomalous nesting sites been observed for this oriole? In the light of the fact that abundant sites of much greater comparative safety were so immediately available close by to these orioles, the use of the banana is all the more singular.-J. EWAN, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, April 3, 1944.

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