Greetings All
I am back to square one on the Newport (Hatfield Marine Science Center) oriole
that I spent considerable time watching and photographing this past weekend. We
finally made it home last night and I have had some time to study my photos in
detail. Here is a gallery of images that I took this weekend.
http://www.birdfellow.com/photos/gallery/954-newport-oregon-oriole-jan-1-2-2016
In all the photos the bird looks more orange than it did in the field. Several
experienced observers have looked at photos of this bird taken by others and
concluded that it is a Bullock's, which was my initial opinion before seeing
the bird in life. It has more extensive yellow/orange on the underparts than
female or immature Bullock's typically do in my experience and the color on the
breast is quite rich compared to a Bullock's. It also has really rich yellow
undertail coverts, which seem more intense than I would expect on a Bullock's.
I've never seen a female/immature Bullock's that looks like this, although I
have found a couple of images of similar birds labeled as Bullock's online.
The bird seems small when I look at my photos of it next to House Finches and
House Sparrows. In my initial views (the first few photos in this gallery) it
seemed very round headed, short-billed and strongly lemon yellow below. When at
the feeder in the courtyard behind the science center, I do think that
refraction of light off of the windows and the big hummingbird feeder full of
red nectar may be accentuating how orange the bird looks in photos.
Some have commented on the dark eyeline. It really doesn't have much of an
eyeline behind the eye. Where the tracts of feathers come together behind the
eye there is an indentation of trough that creates a shadow effect, which from
several photo angles looks like a darker eyeline. The amount of dark in the
lores does not seem to fit Orchard Oriole, which is what I thought this bird
was as I looked at in the field, particularly those initial views of it in
bright sun sitting in the myrtle tree in front of the science center. I'm not
sure what this bird is now, but I think that the orange coloration is
consistent enough in all the photos, even those away from the hummingbird
feeder, to conclude that it's not an Orchard.
I've never spent much time where Bullock's winter, so perhaps young birds can
be this colorful below, but there don't seem to be any illustrations of such in
any of the major field guides and there are very few photos of birds looking
like this that are labeled as Bullock's online. The possibility of Bullock's X
Baltimore or perhaps Bullock's X Hooded probably need to be explored. I plan to
share this gallery on the ID-Frontiers list tonight after work. I look forward
to hearing what some of those folks have to say.
Dave Irons
