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Yellow-tailed Oriole | Icterus mesomelas
Geelstaarttroepiaal | Bolsero cola amarilla
The Yellow-tailed Oriole is a yellow-and-black oriole of dense vegetation near water in the humid lowlands. It is the only oriole in the guide area with yellow in the tail. Pairs often sing in duet. In the guide area it lives from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
The song consists of full, melodious whistles in short, repeated phrases, such as chuk-chuk-choo-weehoo; pairs often sing in duet. Calls include a dry chek and a nasal nyah.
Recording: Paul Molina Abril — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
21–23 cm. Head, underparts and rump bright yellow; a black mask from bill to around the eye, continuing into a black throat and upper breast. Back black. Wings black with a large yellow shoulder patch. Tail black with yellow outer tail feathers, best seen from below. Bill black with a bluish-grey base to the lower mandible. Male and female are alike; young birds are more olive-yellow, with a black throat but less black around the eye and an olive tail.
Confusion species
Yellow-backed Oriole Icterus chrysater has a yellow back, no yellow shoulder patch and an all-black tail. Black-cowled Oriole Icterus prosthemelas has a black head and breast. Orange-crowned Oriole Icterus auricapillus (eastern Panama) has an orange crown and an all-black tail. Altamira Oriole Icterus gularis is more orange and has an all-black tail.
Habitat
Dense shrubs and low trees along rivers, lakes and marshes, riparian woodland, edges of humid lowland forest, secondary forest, plantations and pasture with hedgerows, mostly below 1000 m. It searches fairly low in the vegetation for insects and fruit. The nest is a deep, hanging pouch in a tree or shrub, often over water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean slope of south-eastern Mexico (southern Veracruz, Tabasco, northern Chiapas and the south of the Yucatán Peninsula) through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama, where it occurs on both slopes. Outside the guide area in northern and western Colombia, Venezuela and along the Pacific coast to north-western Peru.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found by listening for the duets of pairs in vegetation along rivers and canals, such as at Tortuguero in Costa Rica and along the Chagres River in Panama.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Fairly common; in parts of its range locally reduced by trapping for the cage-bird trade.
Scientific name
Icterus mesomelas | (Wagler, 1829)
Wagler described the species in 1829 as Ps[arocolius] mesomelas; 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. mesomelas is Greek, from mesos 'middle' and melas 'black': 'black in the middle', after the black back and wings set in yellow. The specimen the first description was based on came from Chalcaltianges, Veracruz (Mexico).