Migrating Baltimore orioles brighten area neighborhoods
Be on the lookout for a brightly plumed bird called a Baltimore oriole that may decorate your yard like a sunflower.
Baltimore orioles migrate through our neighborhoods in large numbers in April. They arrive from winter homes in southern Mexico down through Central America and into Colombia and Venezuela.
The beauty of the bird has never been better expressed than by the 18th-century English naturalist Mark Catesby (1683–1749), who gave it the name “Baltimore Bird” in his “Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands,” published in 1731.
Catesby wrote, “The bill is sharp and tapering; the head and half-way down the back, of a
shining black. The wings, except the upper parts (which are yellow) are black, with most of the feathers edged on both sides with white. The rest of the body is a bright color, between red and yellow.”
Catesby was probably not the first to name the bird Baltimore because he wrote, “It is said to have its name from the Lord Baltimore’s coat of arms ... . ” Lord Baltimore (1578-1632) was the British proprietor of the Maryland colony.
Early European colonizers called the bird an oriole because it resembled the Old World golden oriole in the family Oriolidae. But Catesby gave it the genus name Icterus and thus correctly placed the oriole in the same Icteridae family as blackbirds and meadowlarks.
The oriole weaves a gourd-style nest out of such materials as plant fibers, grass and string, with an entry hole at the top, and then suspends
the nest from a limb. Or as Catesby wrote, “Its nest is ... supported only by two twigs fixed to the verge of the nest and hanging most commonly at the extremity of a bough.”
We won’t see the nest in our area, but our neighbors in the Panhandle have a chance of seeing it.
Baltimore orioles migrating through our area forage for their typical diet of insects but
also devour fruit pulp from oranges and sugar water in hummingbird feeders. Fruit and nectar likely provide quick energy for the rigors of migration.
At our home, we impale half an orange on a nail in a tree during April and early May to attract the bird. Works pretty well. So do our hummingbird feeders.
The handsomely plumed orioles remain here briefly before heading to mostly northern breeding grounds in the eastern and midwestern U.S. and in southern Canada. But what a show they put on while they’re here.