I am jealous of your oriole! I love them so much. I had several pairs nest every year at my old home but never had one since I moved. Did you have them before you put up the feeders? I've never put up feeders for them, they just showed up. Three years in a row they made nests on the same branch in a tree in my front yard. They found some string from a blue tarp, and they'd use it every year to build their nests, which made the nests very strong and they really stood out. One year we had winds in excess of 80 mph and I was worried sick about those poor little babies. After the storm I was outside with a flashlight, searching the ground for the babies. Darned if the next morning they were all in that tarp built nest, still alive. I was thrilled they survived the storm. The following year one oriole built a nest on a limb that was only five feet off the ground. We joked it had to have been one of those babies from the wind storm that was brain damaged. :) I sure miss those birds since we moved. They seemed like old friends. Thanks for sharing your picture.

I was just reading this thread and feeling very jealous of you all when my doorbell rang and after I answered it I walked through the kitchen and saw 2 orioles at my hummingbird feeder. I could not believe my eyes. I thought I took a picture but nothing showed up in the camera. I may have forgotten to push the button or something. This explains why my feeder has been drained for the past week. I only have a couple of hummingbirds but I didn't put your messages together with the thought that I might have something else feeding there. I found a good web site that tells about them. The pictures on the web don't do them justice. Their color is brilliant. Here is a link that might be useful: baltimore oriole information

My yard has numerous mature trees, mostly an open woodland habitat, which is the attractive to Orioles. There is a large Pin Oak right above my deck and bird feeders. Baltimore Orioles have nested in this tree for 3 years in a row. This year I've been watching them more closely and reporting sightings to the Oriole Project with Mass Audubon. Right now, both parents are very busy feeding the babies, and I can hear them squeaking when they are getting fed! Their nest is located at the end of a branch at the bottom of the canopy about 30 feet above the ground. It is a different branch each year, but the nests have been close to each other and the shell of the previous year's nest hangs there for awhile. The nest is an amazing hanging pouch of woven fibers. I watched the female weave the nest this year! I don't feed Orioles, and have reduced the amount of food I put in the feeders because I didn't want to attract a lot of birds to the feeding station so as not to disturb the Orioles. They are very territorial about their nesting area. When the female was incubating eggs, Dad was aggressively chasing away all birds, from Crows and Grackles, to even the little Goldfinches! I can't imagine them tolerating other Orioles near the nest. I don't know how far they nest from feeders or other food sources, but I've observed them several time flitting through the branches and leaves of assorted trees (including Crabapples), probably picking at insects. Here's a couple pics from this year.

Thanks, Jane, for the references. I found the sites: Carl Strang's June 2009 entry and Stanford group essay on Cowbirds. I'm a little skeptical about Strang's statement on instinctual behavior - it may be true but it sounds more like a belief not based on any science. (Just a quibble on my part - if he'd said the juvenile cowbirds 'appear' to seek out other cowbirds, based on his observations, I wouldn't have been annoyed - but ascribing the behavior to 'instinct' is a jump too far). A very interesting fact in the Stanford essay is that only about 3 percent of cowbird eggs actually result in adults! That's major mortality. The cowbird female just keeps laying eggs and eggs and eggs ... "An average female lays about 80 eggs, 40 per year for two years. About 3 percent of those 80 eggs end up as adults -- an average of 2.4 adults per female. Clearly, such numbers more than compensate for the excessive loss of eggs and young in the nests of inappropriate hosts." I wonder how the current situation differs from the earlier situation when the cowbirds evolved to follow the bison herds and couldn't hang around to set up a proper nest without dropping behind and struggling to find food for themselves and the young. That behavior probably was dependent on the migration patterns of the bison, but nowadays the cowbirds have the luxury of being able to stay in the same area as their young, even if they don't get involved in the raising of them. As far as which came first, the parasitic behavior or the adaptation to it, I would think that the ability to lay so many eggs and the rapid maturation of the young would come early. There's an interesting entry in the Birds of North America Online site (subscription only) saying that "Most fledgling losses occurred 1 or 2 d after leaving nest". There are a lot of unknowns here, but it's an interesting topic for study. I'm glad I don't have to do the research myself, it would drive me crazy trying to pull together all of the variables. Claire