This is only my second year to have Orioles and I've never seen a nest. John - Do you know what kind of trees your neighbor has that they like? Last year, the Orioles stayed around for a little while and then disappeared so they must've nested in someone else's yard - not mine. This year they showed up about a week earlier than last year. I've seen as many as 4 males at a time in our dogwood tree where I've been feeding them. The females aren't around as much and I've only seen two. Here's a picture of my "Orange Tree" The darker one in the middle may be an Orchard Oriole. It was rainy. Here's a close-up of a Baltimore Oriole at the feeder.

Ive tried in vain for years to get Baltimore orioles to come to feeders. I've tried various specialty sugar water feeders, put out sliced oranges and grape jelly to no avail. The only thing that touches oranges here are chipmunks and squirrels, just chewing a little. I see plenty of orioles in May when they return, and sporadically the rest of the year. They are going for the mulberries in my yard now. My brother has orioles that come to his hummingbird feeder - he takes the popular perky pet feeder, and removes the bee guards. These are my favorite sugar water feeders. (I put up a couple without realizing the perches are in the bottom of the box, be sure to install those.) Orioles might go for mealworms - those seem to be like filet mignon for birds. Here is a link that might be useful: perky pet feeder

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