I love the first week of May each year when the Baltimore Orioles return.

We put out a special oriole feeder and load it with half an orange each morning.

With their lovely songs, for about one month, they are easy to spot as they forage in their favourite mid to upper level of trees. The Orioles abandon the orange feeder after about 2 weeks and a few weeks later, as the chicks mature, they stop singing and I rarely see any Orioles.

This morning at East Point Park I was fortunate to see this one in the distance.

Other birds and a bee and a butterfly:

NATURE POETRY

How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendor through our Northern sky?

At some glad moment was it nature’s choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?

Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black,
In some forgotten garden, ages back,

Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird? – Edgar Fawcett

Miles Hearn