Baltimore Oriole

As most people know, to attract a Baltimore Oriole to your garden you are supposed to put out fresh fruit – a half orange being a classic meal for them or maybe some grapes.

This immature male arrived and obviously had not yet reached that page in the How to be a Better Oriole instruction manual as having found the peanut feeder, he got stuck in and made a good meal. What’s more he came back an hour later for more.

Checking their food requirements on the Cornell website it seems they have a pretty catholic diet but peanuts are still not on the list:

Baltimore Orioles eat insects, fruit, and nectar. The proportion of each food varies by season: in summer, while breeding and feeding their young, much of the diet consists of insects, which are rich in the proteins needed for growth. In spring and fall, nectar and ripe fruits compose more of the diet; these sugary foods are readily converted into fat, which supplies energy for migration. Baltimore Orioles eat a wide variety of insects, including beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, moths, and flies, as well as spiders, snails, and other small invertebrates. They eat many pest species, including tent caterpillars, gypsy moth caterpillars, fall webworms, spiny elm caterpillars, and the larvae within plant galls. However, orioles can also damage fruit crops, including raspberries, mulberries, cherries, oranges and bananas, and some fruit growers consider these birds a pest.