My First Baltimore Oriole

I have always hated cold weather. Perhaps it is because I spent six years of my life in Newfoundland, Canada (the foggiest place in the world; the second foggiest place is between my ears--which I discovered at the Naval Academy), two years in North Chicago, four years in Pennsylvania, five years in Maryland, two years in Minnesota, three and a half years in Alaska, eighteen months in Washington state, one year in Connecticut, and six months in Massachusetts . . . but I digress!

I am developing a new appreciate for cold weather because, in the past two weeks, we saw four new birds at our house: painted bunting, Cooper's hawk that crashed into our window, American goldfinch, and, now, a Baltimore oriole.

Thursday morning I noticed the bird bath had frozen over again. I heated up some water, poured it into the bath, and set up the camera. In the clip below, a house finch dines at the feeder. The oriole showed up to take a very quick bath, but, before it flew off, a Carolina chickadee briefly attempted to grab a seed from the feeder but the finch foiled its efforts.