Audubon's Oriole

Overview

Audubon's Oriole: Large oriole with yellow-green upperparts, black hood extending onto upper breast, and lemon-yellow underparts. Wings are black with a single white bar and white-edged feathers. Tail is all black. Swift and direct flight with rapid wing beats low under the canopy.

Range and Habitat

Audubon's Oriole: Occurs in the Rio Grande Valley of southernmost Texas. From southern Texas, range extends south along the Gulf of Mexico through the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Hidalgo, and Queretaro. Preferred habitats include riparian thickets, scrub, forest undergrowth, and semiarid pine-oak woodlands.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Audubon's Oriole is the only yellow oriole to have a black hood and a yellow back.
It is a favored host of the nest-parasitic Bronzed Cowbird. In Texas, more than half of all nests have cowbird eggs in them.
It was formerly known as the Black-headed Oriole, but this name was changed in 1983 to avoid confusion with an Old World group of species in the genus Oriolus, the true orioles.
A group of orioles are collectively known as a "pitch" and a "split" of orioles.

The Audubon's Oriole has a range that spans up to 270,000 square kilometers around the globe. This bird can be found native to Guatemala, Belize, the United States and Mexico. It has also been seen in Puerto Rico. The population of Audubon's Oriole is thought to be around half a million individual birds. The status of this bird changed from Lower Risk to Least Concern in 2004 due to lack of evidence that the population is decreasing or that the bird will become endangered over the next few years.