Up close with one of our brightest and most vocal visitors
From Dan Jordan, wildlife photographer
Have you heard? Bird is the word! Of course, this is a reference to the lyrics of a song from 1963 called Surfin’ Bird, by the Trashmen. Peter Griffin from Family Guy (Season 7) probably made the lyric more famous than the original with his quirky repetitive rendition of the “Bird, Bird, Bird, Bird is the Word” lyric. Anyways, in this series of articles, Bird [really is] the Word!
I have become a wildlife photographer in my retirement years. I travel extensively to find wildlife, but most of my encounters and the resulting images are from right here in our local area.
In the Seventh installment of this series, published last week, I shared images and discussed how bald eagles mature over their first five years of life, until reaching adulthood. I’m changing gears quite a bit this week. Since I am getting a sense of spring in the air (hopefully not too premature!), I am going to share images of orioles, a species which return from migration in the springtime in WNY.
There are several species of orioles in the U.S. The most commonly seen species in our area is the Baltimore oriole. This feature image shows male and female orioles at one of the feeders in our lawn.
Male Baltimore orioles are known for their vibrant orange plumage. Like many species of birds which exhibit sexual dimorphism, Baltimore oriole females have much more muted colors.
The Baltimore oriole is not the only species you might see in NY or PA. We also get orchard orioles in our neck of the woods, although they are not nearly as common as the Baltimore orioles. There are several other species of orioles found in other parts of North America too, such as Bullock’s oriole and hooded oriole. In all, I believe that there are 8 species in N.A. This next image is of an adult male orchard oriole that perched in our red bud tree a couple of years ago.
As you can see in this image, the orange hue of the orchard oriole is less vibrant, more like the color of the breast of an American robin.
Orioles migrate each year, making arduous journeys to central America or the Caribbean islands. They leave our area in August (usually) and return around the first of May. For several years, orioles arrived at our home on the fourth of May, but in 2024 they returned about 10 days earlier. The 2023-2024 winter was quite mild, and I wonder if this influenced their timing.
Here’s a tip for you if you want to attract orioles to your property. Get your feeder(s) set in place and stocked with orange halves and grape jelly by mid to late April. If you wait to see orioles before putting out feeders, you may have missed your opportunity. When these birds return from migration, they are physically drained and need to replenish their energy. If they see their favorite foods, they will stop and, in many cases, make their home in your neighborhood. Oh, by the way, we put out blueberries for the orioles too. What the orioles don’t eat, the grey catbirds will, and the catbird is another of my favorite species of bird.
We are blessed with large populations of orioles each year. I credit that to having plenty of food for them and having good nesting sites nearby. There were three oriole nests along our street in 2024 and from the sheer numbers of orioles at our feeders, I think there had to be about adozen nests nearby.
When orioles fledge from their nests, their behavior is fun to watch. They’re so inept at first, but they gradually gain experience and confidence. Both parents feed the young orioles, but in my observations, the males do the heavy lifting here.
This is one of my favorite oriole images. The male had just fed the young oriole a spider, but the meal was dropped during the handoff. You can almost sense the despair as both birds look down as if to say, “what happened here?” The falling spider can be seen in the lower part of the image.
Young Baltimore orioles look a lot like females. In the case of orchard orioles, the young look very much different from the adults for the first couple of years. This next image, believe it or not, is of a juvenile orchard oriole. I had to seek help to identify this bird when I first photographed it. I had no idea that it was an oriole when I first saw it.
Baltimore orioles are expert basket weavers. Their nests look like hanging baskets from the limb of a tree. The females weave grass and animal hair into these basket-like nests before mating season. These nests are very distinctive and when/if you see one, you will know you saw one.
Orioles have voracious appetites for insects and small worms, but they also like fruits. I mentioned oranges, grapes (jelly), and blueberries above, but you can also feed them watermelon pieces. Watching them eat a blueberry is very entertaining. They will insert their beaks into a berry, and suck out the insides, leaving the skin behind. Sometimes they fly off with the berries, but usually eat them at the feeder, leaving the skins behind.
Here’s an image of a male with a small green worm it captured in the hawthorn tree across the street from our home.
If you see multiple orioles, you may notice color variations in both the males and females. Last year, the colors of the males we hosted showed a wide spectrum of oranges. Some were very yellow orange while some tended toward the red spectrum of orange. They had one thing in common, though. Their plumage was breathtaking!
I sit on my deck less than 20 feet from our oriole feeders and redbud tree, and they come in by the droves to queue up in the redbud and then fly the short hop to the feeders. They are undaunted by my proximity or by the shutter clicks as I capture thousands of images of them. It is a virtual oriole paradise, and I take full advantage of it!
I’ll leave you with an assortment of my favorite oriole images, including one image of a Bullock’s oriole that I captured in Utah on a recent road trip (for comparison to our local species).
In this image the juvenile oriole was begging to be fed. I imagined that the male was saying, “hold your horses there young one, I’ll get to it. There is traffic at the feeder right now!”
In the late summer, yellow jackets like to infest the grape jelly bowl. The orioles don’t seem to mind as much as I do when I refill the jelly bowl. I was able to capture images of the bird-bee interactions including this one of a juvenile male (I believe) staring down the yellow jacket.
Here is a good example of the color variation I mentioned above. These are two adult, male Baltimore orioles.
And I close with the promised image of a Bullock’s oriole from Utah.
I find the short period in late July or early August when the orioles all leave very depressing. It takes me a few days to redirect my attention to eagles and other species of birds once they depart for the warmer climate they call their winter homes. In just over a month, the orioles will be back and I am really, really looking forward to their return!
I plan to submit more in this series of anecdotes about my local wildlife encounters in the future. If you have any questions or comments for me, or even suggestions, I can be reached at dan@jordanphotog.com. Thank you for your interest in my work.
