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Venezuelan Troupial | Icterus icterus
Troepiaal | Turpial venezolano
The Venezuelan Troupial is the largest oriole in the region and the national bird of Venezuela. On the ABC Islands it is a familiar bird of gardens and cactus scrub, known in Papiamento as trupial. It rarely builds its own nest, instead taking over the nests of other birds, sometimes by force, and eating the owners' eggs or young.
Voice
A loud, clear whistle in repeated phrases such as troop-treeal, troop-treeal, often of three or four notes. Pairs duet to defend their territory. Also a harsh, nasal chuck.
Recording: Rosendo Fraga — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
23–27 cm, large and heavy, with a long tail and a heavy, pointed bill. Head, throat and upper breast are black, the lower edge of the bib ragged on the breast. Nape, mantle, rump and underparts are bright orange to orange-yellow. The wings are black with a large white patch across the coverts and white edges to the inner flight feathers; the tail is black. The iris is yellow, surrounded by a patch of bright blue bare skin. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller.
Confusion species
Yellow Oriole Icterus nigrogularis is smaller and yellow rather than orange, with only a black throat and lores and no blue skin around the eye. Baltimore Oriole Icterus galbula is smaller, with an all-black head but no orange mantle; its back is black and the wing has white bars rather than a large white patch. In Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican Oriole Icterus portoricensis is mostly black with yellow.
Habitat
Dry cactus and thorn scrub, dry forest, coastal scrub, palm groves, parks and gardens. It eats mainly fruit, on the ABC Islands much of it from columnar cacti, as well as insects. It nests in nests taken over from other species, often in thorny shrubs or cacti.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident on Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, where the subspecies ridgwayi occurs. Introduced and established in Puerto Rico, mainly in the dry south-west but spreading east and to higher ground, and in the US Virgin Islands. Rare on Trinidad, where at least some records probably involve escaped cage birds. Outside the region in north-eastern Colombia, northern Venezuela and on Isla Margarita.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On the ABC Islands it can be seen almost anywhere in gardens and cactus scrub, often perched on top of a columnar cactus. In Puerto Rico the dry south-west, such as the area around Guánica, gives the best chances.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In Venezuela and Colombia the species is trapped for the cage-bird trade.
Scientific name
Icterus icterus | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as O[riolus] icterus; 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. icterus is from Greek ikteros 'jaundice', a yellow bird whose sight, according to Pliny, cured jaundice. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana (accepted).