The black-headed oriole (Wikipedia and iNaturalist), referred to as the African black-headed oriole in Birds of the World, is found in Africa and is the fourth species of oriole I've seen. But now I learn that there are New World orioles in the Genus Icterus and Old World Orioles in the family Oriolidae. The New World orioles are not closely related to the Old World orioles, but because they are similar in size, diet, behavior and strongly contrasting plumage, they are both given the same vernacular name. Given this new knowledge, this is my first Old World oriole. We were staying at the Savannah Lodge on the outskirts of Kidepo Valley NP in Uganda, relatively close to the South Sudan border. I was going up to the lodge for dinner and saw it fly into a very tall tree. The photos are blurry, but clearly identify it.
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| Illustration from Birds of the World. |
The nominate subspecies has a glossy black head, neck and upper breast; a brown iris; a red or brownish-red bill; a bright yellow mantle; and varying degrees of yellow, with shades of olive-green or gray elsewhere on the body; and black on portions of the wing and tail, intermixed with white or whitish-gray. There are six subspecies and I saw ssp. rolleti which is found in southern South Sudan, Uganda, the Lake Victoria Basin; eastern DRC, western and southern Ethiopia, and western and central Kenya. Rolleti is smaller than the nominate ssp. and has brighter yellow upperparts.
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| Range map from Birds of the World. |
