The Orchard Oriole swaps the typical flame-orange of other orioles for a deep, burnished russet. Hopping among riverine shrubs or scattered trees, male Orchard Orioles sing a whistled, chattering song to attract yellow-green females. The smallest of North America’s orioles, it gleans insects from foliage and builds hanging, pouchlike nests during its brief breeding season, and then heads back to Central America for the rest of the year. Orchard Orioles also feed on fruit and nectar in orchards, gardens, and elsewhere.
Size & Shape
Orchard Orioles are slim songbirds, larger than warblers and vireos. They have medium-length tails, rounded heads, and a straight, sharply pointed bill.
Color Pattern
Adult males are black above and rich reddish-chestnut below. They have a black head and throat, with a reddish-chestnut patch at the bend of the wing. Females are greenish yellow with two white wing bars and no black. Immature males look like females, but have black around the bill and throat.
Habitat
Orchard Orioles spend summers in open woodlands and areas of scattered trees across the eastern United States and southern Canada. Look for them along river edges, in pastures with scattered trees, and in parks and orchards.
Food
Orchard Orioles eat mostly insects and other arthropods, along with some fruit and nectar. They glean prey from the foliage, including parasitic wasps, ants, bugs, caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, mayflies, and spiders. They drink nectar from flowers (and hummingbird feeders). Sometimes they dip their head into the flower opening, picking up pollen along the way; other times they take a more direct route, piercing flowers such as trumpet creepers and black locust at their bases and bypassing the pollen. Their diet shifts to mostly fruit just before fall migration. Migrating flocks forage on ripe mulberries, chokecherries, and other berries.
Nest Description
The female does most of the nest building, completing the project in about 6 days. Suspended from a forked twig, the nest is woven from long blades of green grass that turn yellow as they dry, and usually lined with fine grasses, plant down, catkins, cotton, animal wool, bits of yarn, and feathers. It measures about 4 inches across and 3 inches deep on the outside, with an inner cup measuring 2.5 inches across and 2 inches deep. The eggs are usually visible through the loosely woven nest bottom.
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