Orange You Glad
I know, it’s a
corny title for this post, but there it is.
And it’s all because of the orioles migrating through the region. This time it’s a Bullock’s Oriole.
It took me a
while to adjust to the splitting of the Northern Oriole into two different
species. Their field marks are
distinctive, though. There has been some
interbreeding between the Bullock and the Baltimore in the Great Plains. Fully breeding males of the two species are
easily recognized. Concentrating on the
head, the Baltimore is completely black while the Bullock has a lot of orange invading
the cheek and eye regions (actually a stripe of black through the eye adjacent
to an orange supercilium). Next, the
wing is barred in white for the Baltimore, but the Bullock’s wing has a large
distinctive white patch.
The difficulty
is in the immatures. The above
photographs are of a Bullock first year male.
The clues are the dark throat patch and the eye line.
Photographs by Bill Ravenscroft
Labels: Baltimore Oriole, birding, Bullock's Oriole, migration, Orioles
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