Recently I notices some bright yellow birds flying around in a fig tree in Tai Ping. They were about the size of a starling and some were very bright yellow and some were greenish colour. They looked like they were eating the little round fruits on the fig tree. Do you know what these are?

Yes, these are orioles - there are a few passing through Lamma at this time of year. Orioles are famous in America for the Baltimore Orioles, also adopted as the name of a sports team (baseball? football? basketball?)

In Europe there is the Golden Oriole, and these are rather similar to the one now passing through Hong Kong, but it is different species called the black-necked oriole. The male is bright yellow and the female and immature are greenish yellow.

I'll see if i can find some pictures

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Yes, managed to find a few trawling the net.

The photos below compare the two species - the European golden oriole and the Asian black-naped oriole:

<img src="http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/images/e-zine/25/Oriole-golden-bb.jpg" border=1 align=left hspace=5><img src="http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/images/e-zine/25/Oriole-black-naped-bb.jpg" border=1>

They are taken from an Indian wildlife site http://www.kolkatabirds.com/species4.htm

There is a very fine shot of an adult male black-naped oriole by Laurence Poh at this site:

http://www.angelfire.com/pe2/digiscopin ... oriole.htm

If you are ever lucky enough to possess a nice crispy clean $500 Singapore note, you will also see the bird there:

<img src="http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/images/e-zine/25/Oriole-Singapore500-bb.gif" border=1>

This type of bird is kind of rare in HK, it sing really well and loud and was one of the most demanding type of petting bird around 20 years ago, a single baby can be price at HKD 400.00 (20 years ago), I found one nest before, and try to capture the babies for sale- I was 12 years old....so kindof ignorant then, but when I reached the nest, some 50 ft above ground on a cotton tree, found no eggs and its dad(yellow one) saw me and I checked a few days later, they never came back, I think the female one is in green if I remember correctly.