Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

Most folks who know a little about birds (or baseball) hear “oriole” and picture the Baltimore oriole, with its high-contrast orange and black. That more famous baseball bird has a smaller, more subtly colored cousin, however. The male orchard oriole is similarly dressed, but swaps out the bright orange and saffron for rust and brick-red. Because of their smaller size and the color differences, male orchard orioles were originally misidentified as female Baltimore orioles, thus the scientific binomial Icterus spurius – spurius means “illegitimate” or “bastard” and references that historic misidentification.

Like all its New World “oriole” relatives, the orchard oriole is actually a member of the blackbird family (Icteridae). Based on their colors and behavior, many New World blackbirds were (understandably, but) incorrectly lumped into the Old World bird family Oriolidae by early taxonomists. Now that we know they’re *not* related (their similarities are due to convergent evolution), perhaps we could choose a more appropriate common name? While we’re at it, what about that scientific binomial? Icterus spurius translates as “the bastard yellow bird.” Could we at least make that “rusty yellow bird” and not cast aspersions on its lineage or very existence?

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.