Adult male. Photo: Rick Derevan/Audubon Photography Awards
Icterus bullockii
| Conservation status | Still widespread and common, with only slight declines noted in recent decades. |
|---|---|
| Family | Blackbirds and Orioles |
| Habitat | Open woods, riverside groves. Breeds in deciduous trees in fairly open habitats, such as forest edge, isolated groves and streamside woods, especially in cottonwood trees. Readily adapts to some suburban neighborhoods if enough trees are present. Winters mostly in the tropics around forest edge and semi-open country. |
Forages by searching for insects among foliage of trees and shrubs, rarely on the ground. Sometimes flies out to catch insects in midair. Visits flowers for nectar, and will come to sugar-water feeders; also attracted to pieces of fruit put out at feeders.
4-5, sometimes 3-7. Bluish white to pale gray, with brown and black markings concentrated at larger end. Incubation is by female, about 11 days. Young: Both parents feed the nestlings. Young leave nest about 14 days after hatching.
Both parents feed the nestlings. Young leave nest about 14 days after hatching.
Insects, berries, nectar. In summer feeds mostly on insects, especially caterpillars; also eats beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, wasps, bugs, and others, plus spiders. Eats many berries and wild fruits, sometimes cultivated fruit. Feeds on nectar and will take sugar-water.
Male sings to defend nesting territory. In courtship, male faces female and stretches upright, with tail spread and wings quivering and partly open. Nest site is in tall deciduous tree, suspended from the tips of slender drooping branches, usually 10-25' above the ground, can be up to 50' high. Nest (built by female, sometimes with help from male) is a hanging pouch, with its rim firmly attached to a branch; tends to be wider and deeper than the nest of Baltimore Oriole. Nest is tightly woven of plant fibers, strips of bark, vine tendrils, grass, yarn, and string, lined with fine grass, plant down, hair.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
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