What Do Orioles Eat?

Video Transcript

"Baltimore Orioles, and orioles in general, tend to be a combination of insect eaters, but they are also what we call nectavores, which means they'll take nectar, so that if you were to watch an oriole in the spring particularly, you'll often see them in flowering shrubs, or trees, apple trees, quinces, that kind of thing, where they're actually putting their beaks right into the flowers, and they're actually taking nectar, or in some cases, tiny little insects that may be associated with them. Because orioles are migratory birds, and most of them leave the United States for the winter, if you follow them down into Central America, where a lot of orioles spend the winter, you'll see that they are often associated with these large canopy trees, that are filled with flowers and so forth, where there is lots of tropical species that are feeding on the nectar of these flowers, and orioles are right up there with them, so that they do a lot of that as kind of an unusual way of feeding, for a bird that's medium size. Orioles are little tiny birds, but they also take lots of insects. Like so many songbirds, they do have a long pointed bill. They're very adaptive at catching insects and caterpillars, and things, so again, mostly insects, but also the ability to take nectar. In fact, a lot of people that put out hummingbird feeders to attract hummingbirds, you know hummingbirds are tiny, with long slim bills that go into the, orioles will come to those kind of feeders. They will also come to fruit, if somebody puts out slices of orange, early in the spring, when orioles first come back from wintering in the tropics. They'll often go to a feeder that has fruit, fruit on it, because again, they like fruits and the nectar, the juice that is in things like orange slices, and that kind of thing, so again, kind of vegetarian in some ways, but also inclined to eat insects on the other hand."