All species › Passerines › New World blackbirds, troupials and allies › Yellow Oriole
Yellow Oriole | Icterus nigrogularis
Gele troepiaal | Turpial amarillo | João-pinto-amarelo
The Yellow Oriole is a medium-sized, bright yellow oriole with a black bib, of open, dry lowlands in northern South America. It builds a long, hanging nest pouch at the tip of a branch, often in an isolated tree. In the guide area it lives only in Colombia.
Voice
The song is a series of clear, somewhat plaintive whistled notes in varying order, sometimes in duet. Calls include a nasal chek and a dry rattle.
Recording: Jerome Fischer — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
20–22 cm, with a pointed bill and a medium-length tail. The plumage is golden yellow, including the back, with a black mask and a black bib. The wings are black, with a narrow white wing bar and white edges to the flight feathers; the tail is black. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are olive-yellow, with little or no black on the throat.
Confusion species
Venezuelan Troupial Icterus icterus is larger, with an all-black head and breast, blue skin around the eye and a large white wing patch. Yellow-backed Oriole Icterus chrysater also has a yellow back, but wings without white, and lives mainly at forest edges on the Andean slopes. Orange-crowned Oriole Icterus auricapillus has an orange crown, a black back and no white in the wing. Yellow-tailed Oriole Icterus mesomelas has a black back and yellow outer tail feathers.
Habitat
Dry forest, thorn scrub, open country with scattered trees, mangrove edges, gallery forest, gardens and farmyards, mainly below 500 m. It eats insects, fruit and nectar. The nest is a long pouch woven of grasses and fibres, hanging from the end of a branch.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the Caribbean lowlands from La Guajira to Córdoba, south in the Magdalena valley, and east of the Andes in the Llanos. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Venezuela, on Trinidad, Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, in the Guianas and in northern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search dry scrub and farms in the Caribbean lowlands for hanging nest pouches in isolated trees; the birds often stay near the nest.
Conservation status
Least Concern. A common species of open and disturbed land; locally trapped as a cage bird.
Scientific name
Icterus nigrogularis | (Hahn, 1819)
Hahn described the species in 1819 as Xanthornus nigrogularis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Icterus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. The genus name comes from Greek ikteros, 'jaundice'; the icterus was a yellow bird (probably the Eurasian Golden Oriole) whose sight was believed to cure jaundice. The species name comes from Latin niger, 'black', and gula, 'throat', for the black throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Brazil.