Swinging Cradles

Baltimore Orioles have been long gone from here, spending their winter in the tropics, but I think of them often... because they've left behind their hanging cradles.

It's pretty hard to know how many orioles we have in the spring.  They flock to the jelly feeder.

Besides four male Baltimore Orioles, do you see another bird in the photo?

We've been putting out grape jelly for them for a number of years now, and I think we have a popular spot for them!  We have other visitors to the jelly feeder, which you can read about in my post called, "Jelly Feeder Parade."

Though the jelly provides a high energy snack they need, I feel a little bad just giving them what seems like junk food to me, so I also give them fruit-- like banana...  

or oranges.

It's hard to count how many birds are using our feeders since they are constantly coming and going.  I decided to try to count their nests from last summer while it is easy to find the nests in the bare tree branches.

All these nests are in close proximity to our house.

Here's number one:

As typical of orioles, it's in the tip top of a tall tree-- you can see it circled in the next photo.

Number two is just down the road a short way.

This one looks like it's been blown around quite a bit since it was used, I'd say.

Number three is also along the road, right in front of our house in fact.

It is still in pretty good shape.

Fairly close to that is number four.

It's in one of the poplar trees in our front yard.

Walking on down the road in front of our house, I expected to see the next oriole nest above our mailbox.  I know it was there, as I watched it each day when I was getting the mail, especially when the parents were actively feeding their babies.  But sometime between November 17th and today, it disappeared.  I think probably the branch it had been on fell down.  Here's the photo from November.

In that photo the orioles nest is on the left and a cedar waxwing nest on the right.
Here's a photo of the same spot from today.

Orioles make such strong nests, they usually last a long time.  Although, I've read that female orioles (which make their nests in about a week) sometimes use material from old nests.  The females do most of the job of weaving their nests, though occasionally her mate will supply material for her to use.  After attaching long grasses to the tree limb, she makes an outer bowl, then an inner bowl, and finally lines it with soft materials.  In the next photo you can see a female taking some hair that I provided for the lining!

Okay, back to counting nests.  We were up to four, and I'm going to count the missing one as number five.

Number six is on down the road just past our place.  It's way up in the outer branch of a maple, over the road.

You can see a bit of a piece of blue tarp in it.

Number seven is located in what we call our 'little woods'.  

Can you find it in the center of the photo above?
It's also visible from our dining room window.

I had one more to count, but though I know it was there this summer, it was gone like number five.  I'm certain about that one, too, so that's eight.  Orioles only have one brood per season, so I think we had 8 oriole families very close by.  That's not a 'scientific fact' but I'd say reasonably certain.  

The other thing I am absolutely certain of is how much I enjoy seeing them and I'm looking forward to their return, around the beginning of May.  The jelly feeder will be ready, and I'm keeping a bag of overripe bananas in the freezer for them!  UPDATE:  While the birds loved the grapes I had frozen, they didn't eat the bananas once they were thawed out.  So I don't recommend using frozen bananas!