Return of Bird of the Week: Chestnut-headed Oropendola

Here’s another Oropendola, this time a Chestnut-headed Oropendola. This is one of the smaller members of the genus, with a body length of about 14 inches (11 inches in the female). It’s fairly widely distributed, from the Caribbean coast of Mexico through Central America as far south as northern Ecuador. Like its fellow Oropendolas, it is a colonial nester, with long, pendulous nests on a tree at a forest edge. Unlike most of its fellow congeners, a typical colony may have a dozen or so female and just 3-4 males, a polygynous mating structure. Chestnut-headed Oropendolas are poorly studied; ornithology…