Orchard Oriole, Icterus spurius

Orchard Oriole, Icterus spurius spurius, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, April 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Orchard Oriole, Icterus spurius spurius, Female. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, March 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Orchard Oriole, Icterus spurius spurius, is one of two subspecies of Orchard Oriole, and both are found in Mexico. They are a member of the Icteriidae Family of Troupials and Allies that includes Grackles, New World Blackbirds and Orioles, that has one hundred five individual species that have been placed into thirty genera and one of thirty-two global species of the Icterus Genus. They are known in Mexico as turpial castaño.

The Orchard Oriole is smallest oriole within its family.  The sexes are dichromatic and easily separated. The adult males have a bill that varies in color from black to slate, with the lower mandible being paler and the inside of the mouth being blackish with a white tongue. The adult females have duller colored bills and the mandible and tip are dark brown in winter. They have brown to dark brown iris and their legs are bluish black with slate black claws in males and dull brown to slate colored in females. Their bill is short, and they have a relatively short rounded tail.

The Orchard Oriole is found in small groups or as a solitary individual in riparian zones, flood plains, lakes, marshes and the shorelines of large rivers, preferring areas with low-density human intrusion including farms and parklands. They are found at elevations up to 1,300 m (4,265 feet). They feed on arthropods, small ripe fruit, and nectar. They are highly migratory, making short annual trips to wintering grounds. They have life spans of up to eleven years. The Orchard Oriole has been poorly studied and very little has been documented about their biology and behavioral patterns.

In Mexico the Orchard Oriole is found throughout the country at various times during the year with the exception that they are absent from Baja California, Baja California Sur, western Chihuahua, and northern Sonora. The spurius subspecies is found from the United States boarder south to northern Tamaulipas to Michoacán and winters in both eastern and western southern Mexico, south to Guatemala.

From a conservation perspective, Orchard Oriole has not been formally evaluated. Their populations are currently negatively impacted by the degradation of riparian zones by human development.