This female Baltimore Oriole has been building a nest in our neighborhood. When photographed on Saturday, she was applying finishing touches by stuffing cattail-bloom fibers into the sack she had woven of grass and other plant fibers. The nest is about 25 feet off the ground, in a tree on a hillside that provides an exceptional view. Two falls ago I found two used oriole nests hanging in plain sight in a boxelder tree. I anticipated good photo opportunities the following spring, assuming the birds would return to the same site. Instead, they nested somewhere in a nearby grove of willows. I never found that nest. I found this one by incidentally parking beneath it while watching a Red-tailed Hawk nest. The oriole caught my eye when she flew in with a bill full of cattail fuzz.
