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That is a very interesting-looking bird. I am so often amazed by the birds I see here. I wonder what other interesting birds people have chanced to see here.

Most common for this area are Hooded Orioles & Bullocks Orioles.

Hooded: http://images.google.com/images?gbv=1&hl=en&q=hooded+oriole&btnG=Search+Images

Bullocks: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bullocks+oriole&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=1

This isn't to say that you didn't see an Altamira, however.

Put out some full, thick, slices of oranges (circular, that is, and not wedges) for the Orioles if you want to feed them. They'll eat other fruit, too, but they really love oranges.

I live in upper Ojai on Sulphur Mountain Road and saw the same bird this morning. It really brightened my morning and I think it is a hooded Oriole.

I believe the whole top of the head was yellow, which seems to match up more with the Hooded Orioles. Thanks for the tip, lots of oranges here on the property, so I'll give it a try.

Here's one from my backyard last month:
http://www.pbase.com/deanzat/image/96864483

We have some orioles up in the East End, too. I just started seeing them a few again days ago. They like to nest up in the tops of the palm trees, in the old dead fronds. Very cool :-)

I've been watching some Curve-billed Thrashers in my yard. A google search says they are a desert bird from Mexico, New Mexico and Texas. Anyone else see these birds around Ojai? I have two parents and 3 babies.

Our local Thrashers are California Thrashers and they're from right here. You might see a LeConte's Thrasher upon rare occasion, but normally they stay in the areas that you mentioned, getting no closer to us than Southeastern California. They sing beautifully, and like the Northern Mockingbird (the bird that sings in the middle of the night) they can mimic other birds' songs. (Right now, I notice that they're sounding like our seasonal Black-headed Grosbeaks.)

Horn Canyon is a good place to see Thrashers (if you aren't lucky enough to have them in your own yard), as is Lake Casitas. They "thrash" the leaf litter with their curved beaks, and sing from the tops or near the tops of bushes. If you know that chicken-scratching sound that California Towhees make when they're searching through the dead dry leaves beneath the bushes, then you're also familiar with the sound that Thrashers make when they're looking for food.

Thanks so much to "Anonymous" for the information. I hope to keep these CALIFORNIA Thrashers in my yard (I'm near Lake Casitas) but can they stand up against the Jays? The territorial jays in my yard have successfully scared away all other birds. :o(

Back to the Oriole. I saw the same one in Santa Barbara last week and was instantly taken with how much more it looked like an Altamira than Hooded. On the one I saw, there wasn't any orange tint at all, just a pure, lovely yellow (outside of the requisite black and white markings).

Tyler & Lisa:

If the bird you saw looked exactly like the one in the photo at the beginnning of this thread, then it most likely was an Altamira Oriole.

I made a comparative image of the Altamira and the Hooded Orioles, and added a few arrows pointing to some of the more immediately apparent features that differentiate the two birds. Mostly, the black mask on the Altamira is smaller, leaving a larger area of cheek showing than on the Hooded. The Hooded has a white wing stripe, whereas the wing stripe on the Altamira is the same color as the rest of the yellow or orange-yellow feathers. On the Hooded Oriole, the light spot on the lower beak is larger and lighter than on the Altamira, and on the Altamira the black mask seeps past the eye and into the
crease; on the Hooded Oriole the mask does not extend past the eye.

Tyler, if you did see an Altamira Oriole, your point was well made; if this Oriole is here now, it's probably having a hard time finding food in its natural range, and there's a good chance that the problem is due to climate change. The winter after the Day Fire sent a lot of Mountain Bluebirds down to places like Ojai where they competed all winter long with the local Western Bluebirds.

If Thumbsnap.com can manage to stay up and running for five straight minutes, you can see the comparative image here: http://thumbsnap.com/vf/bvaHIrxh.jpg (You may need to click on the image once or twice to enlarge it. Those are two other people's copyrighted photos that I gleaned, BTW, and are being presented for informational purposes only.)

Susan:

The Scrub Jays (and the Northern Mockingbirds) will probably win if it comes down to a struggle for feeding and nesting territory. Thrashers are nowhere near as aggressive as either of those other two birds.

I'm not an ornithologist, but after much research I'm convinced we saw an altamira oriole in a grove of tall trees at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA on Monday, July 7, 2008--it fits the online photos I've found. The yellow was pure lemon and it was way larger than other orioles I've seen--I'd guess 10 inches. I'd about given up believing my own eyes, since every reference says it's not found north of south Texas, when I found this post. I too wondered if global warming offered an explanation.

Still further North in California. I just saw one of these Altamira Orioles in my backyard in Petaluma this morning on Friday July 18 2008. I had a very good and prolonged view of this bird and compared it to pictures in my bird books as well as those on line. I was excited to find out that it is a tropical bird. From the posts here, it appears that it is moving up the pacific coast. I too was wondering if this is a result of climate change.

Does anybody know it there is an organization that would be interested in documenting these sightings?