Today's new bird is a golden beauty: the Eurasian Golden Oriole!

Eurasian Golden Orioles breed across large parts of Europe and Asia. They are migratory, spending the winter across the southern half of the African continent.

During the breeding season they are usually found in forests. Although male birds are striking with their yellow and black plumage, these are shy birds and are able to blend into their environment and remain undetected. Females and juvenile birds have a duller plumage that constrasts yellowish-green with olive-brown.

The diet of the Eurasian Golden Oriole has a varied diet with an emphasis on insects like caterpillars, cicadas, and dragonflies. They also feed on fruit, berries, seeds, and even nectar. Small prey items like lizards, mice, snails, and worms may also be taken.

Photo by m-idre31 (CC BY 2.0)

Tomorrow's bird is a species found in India and elsewhere in Asia. They are named for their pink wing feathers that hang over their rumps. Can you guess the species?

Back in the spring we were asked by an artist for permission to use a few of our Birdorable images in a client project. We happily obliged!

Quilting-Mural-Making Mom Me artist Jennilyn was inspired by our Northern Cardinal, Common Raven, and Baltimore Oriole and included them in a custom bedroom wall painting. We think it looks great!

1. The Orchard Oriole is the smallest species of oriole in North America. They are sometimes confused for warblers, due to their small size and bright coloration.

2. The oldest known Orchard Oriole was a captive female who lived to be nearly 17 years old. The longevity record for wild birds is 10 years, 11 months.

3. Besides insects, berries and seeds, Orchard Orioles will feed on trumpet creeper nectar. They will also visit hummingbird feeders.

4. Adult male orchard orioles are predominately chestnut in color. Females and juveniles of both sexes look very different, with olive and yellow plumage.

5. Orchard Orioles migrate at night. They are early migrants, leaving their breeding grounds as early as late July.

6. The Orchard Oriole is one of our cute Birdorable birds! The Orchard Oriole was added to Birdorable on February 19th, 2009.

Photo by mitchmcc

We've been getting more and more birds at our backyard feeders since we moved here in February. Yesterday morning we were delighted to see our first Baltimore Oriole!! He was hanging around all day and he's back today singing his heart out in our backyard. He's probably trying to find a mate to show off our awesome grape jelly that he found. ;) Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get a good picture of this beautiful bird at our feeder, but it looks something like this:

Photo of beautiful tree by boliston

The Baltimore Oriole is a bright orange and black bird that breeds across North America and migrates south in flocks to Mexico, Central America and northern South America. It is the state bird of Maryland and the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball team was named after this bird. Backyard birders can attract these birds with special oriole feeders, which contain the same food as hummingbird feeders, but are designed specifically for orioles: they are orange instead of red and have larger perches. Baltimore Orioles are also fond of halved oranges and grape jelly.

Photo by JD

This bird received its name from the fact that the male's colors resemble those on the coat-of-arms of Lord Baltimore. When George Calvert, an English politician and coloniser of the New World, visited Chesapeake Bay in 1628, he saw the bird for the first time and was so pleased by its colors that he adopted them as his own. Later Linnaeus named the species the Baltimore Oriole because its colors were those of the Calverts.

I hope we'll be able to get these beautiful birds in our backyard this year. We'll certainly put out some oranges for them.

Photo by Larry & Teddy Page

(thanks to Lori Larson for these nice oriole photos that we found on Flickr)