The
Baltimore oriole (
Icterus galbula) is a small
icterid blackbird common in eastern
North America as a migratory breeding bird. It received its name from the resemblance of the male's colors to those on the
coat-of-arms of
Lord Baltimore. Like all
New World orioles, it is named after an unrelated, physically similar family found in the
Old World: the
Oriolidae. Observations of interbreeding between the Baltimore oriole and the western
Bullock's oriole,
Icterus bullockii, led to both being classified as a single species, called the
northern oriole, from 1973-1995. Research by James Rising, a professor of zoology at the University of Toronto, and others showed that the two birds actually did not interbreed significantly.