Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A taxonomic family within the superfamily Passeroidea — the grackles, New World blackbirds, and New World orioles etc.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Icterus +‎ -idae

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Examples

  • Only 75 bird species occur in the valley, with the Columbidae, Tyrannidae, Icteridae, and Fringillidae families sufficiently abundant in the upper valley to be considered characteristic.

    Motagua Valley thornscrub 2007

  • The additional palatal bones just named are also found in several other peculiarly American families, namely, _Tanagridae_, _Icteridae_ and _Mniotiltidae_ -- whence it may be perhaps inferred that the _Emberizidae_ are of Transatlantic origin.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" Various

  • The same may be said, indeed, of the whole _Icteridae_ family.

    Our Bird Comrades 1896

  • _Icteridae_, which includes such familiar species as the bobolinks, orioles, meadowlarks, and the various kinds of blackbirds, none of which, I am glad to say, are parasites.

    Our Bird Comrades 1896

  • All I know is that their family name was the same as ours, _Icteridae_, and means something or other, I forget what.

    Dickey Downy The Autobiography of a Bird Virginia Sharpe Patterson 1877

  • The eggs of _Psaroglossa spiloptera_ are not very dissimilar, and I expect that it is somewhere between the _Paradiseidae, Sturnidae_, and _Icteridae_ that _Irena_ will ultimately have to be located.

    The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 Allan Octavian Hume 1870

  • On the other hand, how remarkable it is that the only small and brightly coloured birds of our own country in which the male and female are alike -- the tits and starlings -- either build in holes or construct covered nests; while the beautiful hangnests (Icteridae) of South

    Darwinism (1889) Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

  • The whole structure bears some resemblance to the nests of the hangnests (Icteridae), with the exception that the cavity is at the top.

    Darwinism (1889) Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

  • Oropendula or Orioles (Icteridae) of tropical America choose high, smooth-barked trees, standing apart from others, from which to hang their pendulous nests.

    The Naturalist in Nicaragua Thomas Belt 1855

  • The Bullock's oriole (a genus named after the unrelated Old World orioles -- sigh) belongs to the family Icteridae, and used to be lumped with the Baltimore oriole of the East, due to some unfortunate sexual indiscretions, as the

    onegoodmove 2010

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