652 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
along the canyons during April, as the birds were inspecting their last 
year’s nests in the tall yuccas, or catching insects from the yucca and 
cactus flowers. Later, when the century plants and lechuguillas 
should blossom, they would find both food and drink, for they gather the 
rich stores of nectar as well as the insects from these blossoms (1928a, 
pp. 152-55). 
On the west slope of the San Andres Mountains, in the edge of 
the Jornada Valley, Mr. Ligon discovered that this beautiful and 
rather rare Oriole was fairly common. He found many nests, all of 
them swinging to the blades of the yucca, usually pretty high up. 
When passing through their country near Camp Lowell, Mr. 
Henshaw found seven or eight of the striking birds at a water hole, 
where “they had evidently come from the adjoining desert to slake 
their thirst” (1875, p. 318). 
ARIZONA HOODED ORIOLE: Icterus cucullatus nelsoni Ridgway 
Description. — Male: Length G.5-8.5 inches, wing 3.3-3.6, tail 3.5-4.2. Bill 
attenuated, decurved; tail long, graduated. Adult male: Light, cadmium yellow 
except for black mask-like throat patch , fore part of back , wings , and tail , grayish tips 
of outer tail feathers, and white bars and edgings of wings. 
Bill, legs, and feet bluish. Adult female: Upperparts olive- 
green, washed with gray on back; wings brownish with two 
while bands and whitish edgings to quills; underparts pale 
yellow . Young: Like adult female but duller, upperparts 
suffused with brownish. Immature males (in second year): 
Like adult female but throat patch as in adult male. 
Comparisons. —The female can be distinguished from 
other female New Mexico Orioles by the decurved bill and 
graduated tail (outermost feathers an inch shorter than central pair). 
Range. —Breeds in the Lower Sonoran Zone of southern California, southern 
Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and south to Tepic and Lower California; 
winters south of United States. Casually in central California. 
State Records. —The Arizona Hooded Oriole, the range of which extends from 
southern Arizona into southwestern New Mexico, has been recorded as far north 
as Silver City, April 13, 1905 (Hunn), where a specimen was taken April 3, 1915 
(Kellogg). It breeds at Carlisle (Barrell); it was taken at 5,100 feet near Adobe 
Ranch July 28, 1908 (Goldman); [it is common in the Animas Mountains in summer 
(Ligon, 1916-1918)1; and a pair was seen at Mesilla, July 22, 1913 (Merrill). 
Although it deserts the State for the winter, a bird was found as late as October 
4, in 1893, in the Guadalupe Canyon in the extreme southwestern corner of the 
State (Mearns).— W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —Cup-shaped, semi-pensile or securely attached to twigs of various trees 
or leaves of fan palms; woven of fresh wiry grass, yucca or fan palm fibers, but 
also made of Spanish moss, lined with down, and sometimes wool, hair, or feathers. 
Eggs: Usually 3 to 4, white or whitish, irregularly spotted, blotched and scrawled 
in zigzag lines with dark brown. 
Food. —Insects and larvae, including hairless caterpillars and small grasshoppers. 
From Handbook 
Fig. 113. Arizona 
Hooded Oriole 
