File:Icterus galbula (Baltimore orioles) 2.jpg

English: Icterus galbula (Linnaeus, 1758) - Baltimore orioles in Ohio, USA. (5 May 2018; photos by Mary Ellen St. John)

Left = male Right = female

Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.

Baltimore orioles are bright orange-colored, New World passerine birds. Males have intense orange-colored plumage with black heads and black-and-white wings. Females have dingier orange-colored plumage with gray-and-white wings. During boreal summers, Baltimore orioles occur in eastern American and parts of Canada. During boreal winter, they occur in Florida, Central America, far-northern South America, and some Caribbean islands.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Passeriformes, Icteridae

Locality: western side of Newark, Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA)

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See info. at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_oriole