Unusual Bird: Baltimore Oriole With Red Color Variation
Adult male Baltimore Oriole, with Summer Tanager red on his upper breast, showed up on Halloween, wearing his costume. As of today, he has been seen, intermittently, for ten days, with, at least four other Baltimore Orioles, at jelly and suet feeders. I’ve only been able to find, one research pdf with similar color variations on a Baltimore Oriole. https://www.aba.org/birding/v39n5p62.pdf, I would like to know if Cornell has any more data, on this. I was not able to find anything on the different Cornell web sites, including Birds of North America, online. At least, I will be able to tell him apart from the others!
Categories: Other
Species: Baltimore Oriole
Comments
4 comments on “Unusual Bird: Baltimore Oriole With Red Color Variation”
You are Great…..
I recently took a photo of a male Baltimore Oriole where the yellow continued up the back of the neck to cover half the back of the neck. I have been taking photos of these beautiful birds for a number of years and have never seen this before. Are these variations normal?
I have the same oriole coming to my feeders. It was driving me crazy trying to figure out what kind of oriole would have red on it’s chest. Thanks for sharing.
Just saw this variation in Greece NY at my oranges. We live near the lake. Beautiful!
We are seeing one that has a lot of red this year.
Looks like there are studies that point to the extra red plumage being caused by the birds consuming the berries of introduced honeysuckle plants!
The red Oriole could be the Orchard Oriole. I have both the Orchard Oriole and Baltimore Orilole in my backyard this Spring.