An Oriole drills a grape...Apalachin, NY

A Baltimore oriole bores into a grape at a feeder in upstate New York

while a Woodpecker watches casually from a perch on a nearby suet

holder. Orioles have arrived just within the last week after a rather

brutal winter. They haven't lost their taste for grapes. Comments and

critiques are always welcome. Thanks...Bill

Beautiful capture! We always time their arrival by the maples budding and the hummers have arrived early this week. We're about 30 mi.east of you in the hills surrounding Conklin - outside of Binghamton. 

Unfortunately,this year we have a black bear that has taken to making the rounds and raiding bird feeders. He demo'd our feeder about mid April and has been quite adaptive in gaining access to neighbors feeders and has bent poles and ripped feeders off porch soffits besides breaking the limbs of trees to get to them. We now take our trash out in the morning rather than the night before pick-up day but some neighbors haven't figured that out yet ... As long as it finds food, it'll keep returning so we're not going to put out the oriole or hummingbird feeders this year - hopefully the flowers, trees and shrubs will suffice... Kind of heartracking though when the oriole or the hummer flitters in the windows,as they did previous years,to let us know the syrup was getting low - sorry, but...