All Those Colorful Orioles

BirdNote®
All Those Colorful Orioles
Written by Conor Gearin

This is BirdNote.

    [Baltimore Oriole song]

The Baltimore Oriole is a standout bird. With adult males’ electric orange and jet black feathers, and females and immature birds in various shades of yellow and orange, it’s no surprise that these birds show up in art, illustrations, and on the uniforms of Baltimore's baseball team.

But they’re not the only orioles worth knowing. Orioles in the Americas belong to the blackbird family — and there are many of them.

    [Orchard Oriole song]

The aptly named Orchard Oriole is never far from a fruit snack during fall and winter. The males are rusty red and black, and females are faded yellow.

    [Orchard Oriole song]

The Hooded Oriole lives in northern Mexico and the southwest U.S. They have a knack for hanging their woven nests onto the bottom surface of palm fronds.

    [Hooded Oriole song]

But that’s just the start. Many islands in the Caribbean have their own oriole. There’s the Jamaican Oriole, the Bahama Oriole, the Saint Lucia Oriole, the Puerto Rican Oriole… the list goes on and on!

    [Bahama Oriole]

Meeting all those orioles would be the work of a lifetime.

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Baltimore Oriole ML202209 recorded by Jay McGowan, Orchard Oriole ML94445 recorded by Wil Hershberger, Hooded Oriole ML105225 recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller, and Bahama Oriole ML32873421 recorded by Andrew Spencer.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2024 BirdNote June 2024
Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# oriole-03-2024-06-14    oriole-03