Read on. No, you didn’t jump to the sports page as the headline suggests. Yes, the Baltimore Orioles are experiencing a losing baseball season. Yes, the Angelkeep Baltimore oriole birds are true winners and playing many extra innings in this season.
Is it because the team population of the birds has increased? Is it due to Angelkeep providing the equipment stimulus for extra innings? Metaphorically speaking, it is a home run year in 2022.
Baltimore orioles are migratory birds appearing all over Indiana during the breeding season. They winter in Central America, with a few who get tired of flying south, hanging out in Florida for the off-season. The bird’s name honored the 17th century’s Lord Baltimore due to his coat of arms’ colors. Maryland voted Baltimore oriole its state bird. Prior to that, 1901, a charter team of baseball’s American League named itself after the bird. Orange and black are their predominant colors, like Halloween.
Angelkeep continues many years of oriole viewing. The past three oriole seasons were enhanced due to sister Kay’s suggestion of the perfect oriole feeder, sold on Amazon of course. It is a bright orange wire, vertically circular, hanging feeder with a small glass beaker intended for grape jelly. The other side of the feeder’s prongs allows insertion of segments of oranges. Orioles eat the orange fruit’s pulp, however prefer to belly up to the bowl of grape jelly. Angelkeep has not determined if the sugary grape jelly sunshine-heats and ferments into wine, the true reason orioles prefer it over the orange fruit.
For the first two years of Angelkeep’s oriole-feeder ownership the process of removing and storing the feeder for a period of time had been followed. Someone advised Angelkeep the orioles fly north and feed heavily from the long flight. They build nests, mate, lay eggs, brood and are never seen on the feeder during that time, or so told. The recommendation was to save the jelly expense. Take down the feeder, clean it, and wait for late summer to reintroduce the oriole feeder to the out of doors. When followed, a second wave of orioles appeared, said to be feeding heavily in preparation for the long travel back to the south. Snow birds of the bird family.
The always-inquisitive side of Angelkeep chose 2022 as a test year. The feeder, once placed, remained available outdoors to the birds 24/7. No removal during nesting time meant inflationary costs of buying grape jelly for the entire summer. Grocery prices spiraled added to inflationary oriole jelly consumption equaled staggering oriole-fuel costs. This truly was a season to experience. Zero oriole stimulus package granted.
Grape jelly lessons learned at Angelkeep must be shared. Stick with the less expensive generic grape jelly. Orioles love generic until they have tasted Welch’s, then they get snooty-picky. On the other hand, if the human providing grape jelly to the orioles also likes grape jelly, then the go-to variety is definitely Welch’s. After filling the oriole feeder’s jelly basin, a spoonful of Welch’s goes down like a spoonful of Grape Heaven. If you stock Welch’s for orioles, then a PB & Welch’s sandwich is just a slather away. Tip No. 2: squeeze-bottles of jelly make filling the feeder beaker quicker. Tipping one’s head back and squeezing Welch’s down the throat is equally easier, faster, satisfyingly delicious.
Bottom line, Angelkeep’s 2022 year of constant summertime offering of the oriole feeder culminated in a constant flow of orioles. There was never a break in the action hanging just five feet from the Angelkeep patio. Angelkeep was privileged to witness the dining of Baltimore oriole males and females, juveniles, and mixed into the grape guzzlers came many a catbird. The occasional stop and taste also occurred with the likes of finches, one cardinal, one blue jay, the occasional blackbird, and likely a few strays not witnessed. Alas, as Bluffton Free Street Fair looms, so goes the passing of a season of Baltimore orioles. The feeder will remain available to them at Angelkeep through this month and into September as long as jelly gets eaten.
Adams County’s Gene Stratton-Porter wrote, “The oriole, spilling notes of molten sweetness, as it shot like a ray of detached sunshine to its nest in the chestnut tree across the road was mine.”
Wells County’s Angelkeep oriole alerted each jelly find, though always the same location. Every announcement came in the form of sharp, short, bolting chirps of the oriole as it perched over the grape basin.
So goes Angelkeep’s best-ever Baltimore oriole season of 2022.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
