[Photography] Black-pillow oriole

One of the favorite songs that people of our age listened to when they were children must be snails and orioles. Snails are very common, but decades have passed, but no oriole has been seen.

One afternoon last summer, a familiar photography teacher sent me a WeChat, telling me that there were a couple of orioles nesting in the park near my home, and sent me a photo of them. It turns out that orioles are really yellow! Seeing that there is still a long time before work, I can look at the blue sky and white clouds outside the window. I seem to hear birds singing, and I can't sit still. I picked up my camera and tripod and went straight to the park.

In the distance, I heard a short, crisp and euphemistic bird song. I seem to have heard of it, but I don't know what it is. I thought it should be an oriole. According to the location map sent to me by the teacher, I turned around for a long time and didn't see the shadow of oriole, but the birds were getting closer and closer. Suddenly, I saw a yellow bird flying overhead. Following its flight path, I carefully observed from tree to tree, and finally saw a big poplar with many branches, more than ten meters high. On a branch near the top of the tree, I vaguely saw a yellow bird standing on it warily. That's an oriole.

At the feet of the oriole, there is a bowl-sized nest made of dead branches. Blink of an eye, it jumped into the nest, occasionally looked around, felt that there was no danger, jumped out of the nest again, only put one foot on the branch and flew away singing. It is estimated that all the birds in the nest have hatched, and parents are busy looking for food for their baby. While Big Bird was away, I quickly found a plane seat and changed several angles. Finally, I can get a panoramic view of the oriole and its nest through the gap between trees and leaves, so I set up a camera to hide, and the rest can only wait patiently.

The bird just hatched and didn't eat much, so the parents didn't come back many times, sometimes they didn't see it for ten or twenty minutes. The oriole bird is not very big, but it has a loud voice and strong penetration. The surrounding trees are tall and dense, so I always smell its voice first, but I haven't seen it for a long time. When it was found, it was out of focus, and it had already entered the nest. A few hours passed, and I didn't take many photos, but I was still very excited, just like fans met idols and met old friends in a foreign country. After all, it was decades ago that I knew its name and actually saw it.

This oriole is golden yellow with black feathers on its wings and tail. The headrest has a wide black stripe, which extends to both sides and connects with the pattern of dark circles, forming a black belt around the top of the head, which is very eye-catching in the golden head. I looked it up online, and it turned out to be a black pillow oriole.

Orioles mainly live in the crowns of tall trees and rarely go down to the ground. They eat insects as well as fruits and seeds. Its singing is crisp and melodious, with a flexible voice, and it can change its tone and imitate the songs of other birds. It sings most frequently in the morning, sometimes in flight.

The black-pillow oriole is mainly a summer migratory bird in China, and some of them are resident birds. Usually, they migrate to the north of China from April to May and migrate to the south from September to June every year. It is a low-risk species.