The Eurasian golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus), also known as the common golden oriole, is a species of passerine bird and the only Old World oriole breeding in Northern Hemisphere temperate regions. It is a summer migrant in Europe and the Palearctic and spends the winter season in central and southern Africa.
The Eurasian golden oriole was formally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He named the species Coracias oriolus, assigning it to the genus Coracias, which now contains only rollers. The species is now placed in the genus Oriolus that Linnaeus introduced in 1766, creating a tautonym.
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The Eurasian golden oriole and the Indian golden oriole were formerly considered conspecific, but in 2005 they were treated as separate species by the ornithologists Pamela Rasmussen and John Anderton, in the first edition of their Birds of South Asia. Support for this split was provided by a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2010, and most ornithologists now treat the Indian golden oriole as a separate species. Alternate names for the Eurasian golden oriole include the European golden oriole and western Eurasian golden oriole. The species is monotypic; no subspecies are recognized.
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The Eurasian golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus) is the only member of the Old World oriole family of passerine birds breeding in Northern Hemisphere temperate regions. The name "oriole" was first used in the 18th century and is an adaptation of the scientific Latin genus name, which is derived from the Classical Latin "aureolus" meaning golden. Various forms of "oriole" have existed in Romance languages since the 12th and 13th centuries. Albertus Magnus used the Latin form oriolus in about 1250 and erroneously stated that it was onomatopoeic because of the golden oriole's song. In medieval England, its name, derived from the song, was the woodwele.
Males of this species are golden yellow in color with black wings that have yellow-tipped coverts. Females are almost greenish with a yellowish-white belly. Despite the bright colors of males it's quite difficult to spot these birds in the yellow and green leaves of the canopy due to their secretive habits.