Icterus galbula
Order Passeriformes
Family Icteridae
Subfamily Icterinae
♂ Adult male.— Head, throat, upper back, wings, and tail black; wing-feathers margined with white; tips of outer tail-feathers yellow for nearly half their length; lower back, breast, and belly, reddish-orange.
♀ Adult female.— Black of the male much duller; rump, breast, and belly yellow; throat often spotted with blackish; tail grayish-orange.
Immature.— Similar to the female.
Nest, a pocket composed of tough fibers or string, hung from the tips of pendulous twigs, commonly of elms, or sometimes close to the upright stem of small trees.
Eggs, white, scrawled with irregular lines of brown or black.
The Baltimore Oriole is a common summer resident of southern and central New England, and the lower Hudson Valley. In the upland of northern New England and New York, the Oriole is confined to the village streets in the more settled valleys; in the forested region of the north it is wholly absent. It arrives early in May, and stays till about the first of September.
All through May and early June Orioles are active and musical, flashing through the trees and whistling, now a single note, now a phrase or two. By the middle of June the young begin to call from their hanging nest, and their crying is then incessant, and resembles the syllables teel-deedee, tee-dee-dee. Some time in July the old Orioles moult, and are then quiet and retiring; after the moult the male whistles again, especially early in the morning, and continues to sing till his departure. The female during the mating season whistles two or three notes similar to the male’s. Both sexes utter a long chatter when excited. The question is often asked whether the Oriole ever uses the same nest a second season. I have never observed such an instance, but it is a very common sight to see a new nest built only a few feet from the old one, or sometimes even the tattered remains of the nest of two years before on still a third twig.
It is a common error in central New England to imagine that a dull-colored oriole seen in an orchard is the Orchard Oriole; the latter occurs commonly only in southern New England and in the lower Hudson Valley.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)