You can hear the begging of little birds as the Bullock’s orioles are feeding their babies. The sound can be heard from quite far, and it seems like it would give away their location. I have certainly found a many nests this way. Both the male and the female are making trips to the nest with food every few minutes. It must be exhausting. They also peer down into the nest to look for a fecal sack. If they find one, they will remove it and deposit it as they fly away from the nest.
They weave a gourd-shaped nest that is usually located out at the end of a tree branch about 10 to 25 feet above the ground. It is made of natural fibers like grass and lichen. The interior part of the nest is usually lined with feathers or the cottony down of willow and cottonwood seeds. Unfortunately, they are also good at finding man-made fibers to use for nesting material like the white ribbon in this nest. I have seen Bullock’s oriole nests in which it looked like half the nest was fishing line. Thus, you will usually find their nests located in habitats near water like along the Willamette river out at Mt. Pisgah.
