Olive-backed Oriole - BirdForum Opus

Photo © by tcollins
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, July 2008

Oriolus sagittatus

Identification

Juvenile
Photo © by Ken Doy
Tingalpa Creek, South East Queensland, May 2018

25–28 cm (9¾-11 in)

• Olive-green head and back
• Grey wings and tail
• Cream underparts, streaked with brown
• Oliv-grey upper tail-coverts
• Bright red eye
• Reddish beak
  

Females can be distinguished from males by a paler bill, duller-green back, and an extension of the streaked underparts up to the chin.

Distribution

Photo © by davidfree
Lake Kununurra, Western Australia, 31 August 2021

Australia and New Guinea.

Taxonomy

This is a polytypic species^[1] consisting of 4 subspecies.

Subspecies

• O. s. magnirostris:

• Lowlands of southern New Guinea

• O. s. affinis:

• North Australia, (Broome, Western Australia to north-western Queensland)

• O. s. grisescens:

• North Queensland (Cape York Peninsula and islands of southern Torres Strait)

• O. s. sagittatus:

• East Australia (northern Queensland to Victoria and south-eastern South Australia)

Habitat

Semi-open woodlands and eucalypt forests.

Behaviour

Diet

Their diet consists of fruit, berries, seeds, nectar and insects. They will occasionally take the nestlings of small birds.

Breeding

The female builds a cup-shaped nest of bark and grass, bound with spider webs. This is attached by its rim to a horizontal fork on the outer-edge of the foliage of a tree or tall shrub. The female incubates the eggs alone, while the male helps to feed the young.

References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
2. Walther, B. and P. Jones (2020). Olive-backed Oriole (Oriolus sagittatus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.olbori1.01
3. Wikipedia

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Olive-backed Oriole. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Olive-backed_Oriole

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