Baltimore Oriole

The birds are back! After only a few days of bringing you some of my other discoveries, it's back to bringing you the birds. The one I have for you today is a Baltimore Oriole. This is the first oriole I've ever had any pictures of, and I've been seeing them everywhere ever since.

I kept thinking last year that the birds I was seeing in the trees didn't quite look like robins. As you can see, this oriole does bear a passing resemblance to an American robin. They both have red or orange colored breasts. The robins breast is a rusty colored red, while this oriole has a bright orange breast.

And that's what I was seeing in the trees last year. Those birds looked too brightly colored to be robins. But I just couldn't catch up to them with my old camera, no matter how much I tried. And I just knew that they must be orioles, but that still didn't help me get my pictures.

But now I finally was able to get the pictures I wanted so bad. Well, here he is, take a good look at him! (That last line is a joke from a very old and very hilarious cartoon called "Fair Today," A Walter Lantz cartoon from 1941.) Anyway... I, uh, got the pictures of the oriole, like I said before.

This particular oriole was nice enough to stay still for me for quite some time. The only real problem was that it decided to stay very high up in a tree, almost directly above me. I dared not move away for fear of losing the bird forever. I was just glad to be able to get the pictures I have here. They're pretty good, but more angles would be helpful.

Here's another one with the camera zoomed back just a little bit. I noticed that orioles are also a little bit smaller than robins. It's just enough to be noticeable. And their habits seem to be quite a bit different. Robins are much more sociable and unafraid of humans than these birds.

I've been seeing a lot of orioles this year, but they move way too fast for me to get any pictures right now. Mostly what I've been seeing has been flashes of that bright orange streaking past from one tree to another, while I stood there trying to get pictures that I never do get.

But thanks to this unusually confident bird, I was able to get one last group of pictures. This is the best of them. It gives us a little bit better angle to look at, but he's still slightly hidden. That's okay though. I know I'll get more chances.

The last thing I want to say about these orioles right now is that these are some of the most beautiful birds I've seen so far. That bright orange together with the black is just amazing to see. I hope you all get the chance to see a bird like this for yourselves.

Nature Center Magazine - I mentioned above about a very good cartoon from 1941 by Walter Lantz, called "Fair Today". It's about a tour through a county fair, an old tradition that shows the best of livestock and agriculture once a year. The subject is mildly based upon nature, and the cartoon is great. So that's why this cartoon is this week's Cool Nature Video. You're going to love this one!