This is bird note.

From a wooded thicket along the lower Rio Grande River comes a rich whistled song.

Your eye catches a flash of brilliant orange.

There's the singer, an Altamira Oriole. A dashing bird.

Its orange body contrasts beautifully with its black breastplate and eye patch. One of the

largest orioles, at 10 inches from beak to tail, the Altamira is a tropical resident year-round, reaching into the United

States only in southernmost Texas. And it was only in 1939 that the Altamira Oriole was first

found north of the Rio Grande. Now it happily visits residents on the Texas side of the river,

especially where juicy orange slices wait in a backyard feeder.

Northerly breeding oils, like the Bullocks in the West, and the Baltimore in the east, are migratory.

These orange beauties nest as far north as Canada, but winter mostly in Central America.

Their songs, too, are memorable, but no match for the music of the Altamira Oriole.

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.

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