Baltimore Oriole

bird · eastern North America · orange and black · migratory

Orange and black beauty. Male Baltimore orioles are strikingly colored with bright orange and black feathers, which reminded early settlers of the coat-of-arms colors of Lord Baltimore, a 17th-century English nobleman.

Long-distance traveler. Baltimore orioles are migratory birds, which means they fly to eastern North America in spring to breed and then travel south again when it gets cold.

Not the same bird. Scientists once thought Baltimore orioles and western Bullock's orioles were the same species and called them northern orioles from 1973 to 1995, but research proved they don't actually interbreed in nature.

Small but striking. These birds belong to a family called icterids, which are blackbirds, and despite their bright colors, they're relatively small compared to many other birds.