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Portrait of Golden oriole

Nature · Birds

Golden oriole

Scarce summer visitor · 24 cm

Oriolus oriolus — Oriolidae (Old World orioles)

A brilliant yellow and black bird of continental woodland that is far easier to hear than to see, keeping to the canopy despite a colour that ought to be unmissable. Its fluty, tropical-sounding whistle carried across the poplar plantations of the Suffolk Brecks, where a small English colony peaked at 27 pairs in 1987 before dwindling away. It last bred confirmed in the UK in 2009.

How to spot them

  • ▸Male brilliant golden-yellow with jet-black wings and black through the eye; pinkish-red bill
  • ▸A loud, fluty, tropical-sounding whistle, 'weela-weeoo', carrying far through woodland
  • ▸Female and young are greenish-yellow and streaked below, easily taken for a green woodpecker
  • ▸Stays in the canopy: the colour is startling but the bird is very hard to see
  • ▸Late spring arrival, from late April into June; poplar and oak woodland

How to know it

A loud, fluty, tropical-sounding whistle, 'weela-weeoo', from high in a poplar plantation

The golden oriole's song — the surest way to find it.

Brilliant golden-yellow with jet-black wings, yet almost impossible to see because it stays in the canopy

Male golden oriole — Oriolus oriolus.

An English colony in the Suffolk poplar plantations peaked at 27 pairs in 1987 and had gone within twenty years

Golden oriole — the Lakenheath and Santon Downham poplars.

Last confirmed breeding in the UK was in 2009, and it is now treated as a former British breeder

Golden oriole — Rare Breeding Birds Panel.

The only European member of a family otherwise of the tropics and Australasia

Golden oriole — family Oriolidae, unrelated to American orioles, which are icterids.

A greenish, streaked female easily mistaken for a green woodpecker in a flash through the canopy

Female golden oriole.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Scientific name Oriolus oriolus, from Latin aureolus, 'golden'
  • •It is the only European member of the family Oriolidae; American orioles are unrelated blackbirds of the family Icteridae
  • •It last bred confirmed in the UK in 2009 and is now treated by the Rare Breeding Birds Panel as a former breeder; a couple of singing males are reported in Suffolk in a good year
  • •It is no longer assessed on the Birds of Conservation Concern Red, Amber or Green lists, having ceased to breed regularly; it was Red-listed in the 2015 review
  • •It remains on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
  • •The English population centred on the poplar plantations around Lakenheath and Santon Downham in the Suffolk Brecks, peaking at 27 pairs in 1987
  • •Those poplars were planted for matchwood; the colony declined as the plantations were felled and not replaced
  • •It winters in tropical Africa and arrives late, from the end of April through to June
  • •It builds a hammock-like nest slung in the fork of a horizontal branch

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources