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Baltimore Oriole | Icterus galbula
Baltimoretroepiaal | Turpial de Baltimore
The Baltimore Oriole breeds in eastern North America and winters mainly in Central America and north-western South America. The Caribbean lies at the edge of its migration route: in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas it is a scarce passage migrant and winter visitor, further east and south a rare visitor.
Voice
The song, occasionally heard in winter too, consists of clear, whistled notes in short, irregular phrases. Calls are a dry, rattling chatter and a whistled hee-lee.
Recording: Bobby Wilcox — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
17–22 cm. The adult male has an all-black head, throat and back and flame-orange underparts, rump and shoulders. The wings are black with an orange shoulder patch and a white wing bar; the tail is black with orange outer corners. Females and immatures are olive-brown to grey-brown on head and back, with a yellow-orange to orange breast, a paler belly and two white wing bars; some females show some black on the head and throat. The bill is pointed and blue-grey.
Confusion species
Orchard Oriole Icterus spurius is smaller and shorter-tailed; the male is chestnut rather than orange and the female greenish yellow without an orange tone. The island orioles such as Jamaican Oriole Icterus leucopteryx, Hispaniolan Oriole Icterus dominicensis and Puerto Rican Oriole Icterus portoricensis are residents; none has the combination of black head and orange underparts, and the last two are largely black. Venezuelan Troupial Icterus icterus is larger, with blue skin around the eye and a large white wing patch.
Habitat
On the islands in gardens, parks, fruit and coffee plantations, forest edges and semi-open woodland, often in flowering trees, where it takes nectar. It also eats fruit and insects. It does not breed in the Caribbean.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Scarce passage migrant and winter visitor in the Bahamas, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico. Rare in the Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and a vagrant to the Lesser Antilles, the ABC Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. Breeds from southern Canada to the central and eastern United States; winters mainly from southern Mexico to Colombia and Venezuela, in small numbers also in the south-eastern United States.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chances are during migration in October and April, and in winter at flowering trees in gardens and parks on Cuba and Jamaica. Females and immatures are often overlooked among other visitors to flowering trees; the white wing bars and the orange tone of the breast are the first clue.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The breeding population is large but, according to North American surveys, slowly declining.
Scientific name
Icterus galbula | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as C[oracias] Galbula; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Icterus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Icterus is from Ancient Greek ikteros, a yellow bird usually taken to be the golden oriole, the sight of which was thought to cure jaundice. galbula is the Latin name for a yellow bird, again probably the golden oriole. The specimen the first description was based on came from Virginia.