- Vermivora celata
Identification
Location: Edmonds, Washington, USA
4.25 inches in length. Small, active, insect-eating bird with thin, very pointed bill. Indistinct yellow supercilium. Indistinct broken eye ring. Grayish to olive head, bac, and wings. No wing bars. Yellow to dull yellow/olive underparts with blurry, indistinct streaks on breast. Yellow undertail coverts. Orange crown patch rarely visible. Females and immatures are somewhat duller. Considerable variation in plumage with western birds being somewhat yellower and eastern birds grayer.
Distribution
Orange-crowned Warbler: Breeds from Alaska east to Quebec and Labrador, and south to California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Spends winters from southern U.S. into tropics.
Taxonomy
The Orange-crowned Warbler is divided into four subspecies that differ in plumage color, size, and molt patterns. The one named celata is found in Alaska and across Canada, and it is the dullest and grayest. The Pacific Coast form, lutescens, is the brightest yellow. Found throughout the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin, orestera is intermediate in appearance. The form sordida is the darkest green and is found only on the Channel Islands and locally along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California.
Habitat
Preferred habitats include forest edges, especially in low deciduous growth, burns, clearings, and thickets; often seen in riverside willows and scrub oak chaparral during migration.
Behaviour
They forage actively in low shrubs, flying from perch to perch, sometimes hovering. These birds eat insects, berries and nectar.
The song of this bird is a trill, descending in pitch and volume. The call is a high chip.
Although Orange-crowned Warblers are mostly considered solitary birds, they can sometimes be found in mixed flocks with chickadees, kinglets, juncos, vireos, and other warblers, usually post-breeding only or in migration with other migrant species.
Orange-crowned Warblers eat mostly insects, but supplement that diet with berries, suet, tree sap, and flower nectar. They pierce the base of a flower to get at the nectar, and visit woodpecker and sapsucker holes for tree sap. The young eat almost entirely insect larvae.
Males arrive first on the breeding grounds and establish territories. Returning males often use the same territory as the previous year. Monogamous pairs form shortly after the females return. The female chooses the nest site, which is usually on the ground under dense vegetation, but may be in a shrub, low tree, fern, or vine. The female builds a small, open nest cup out of leaves, moss, small twigs, and bark, lined with fine grass and hair. The female incubates 4 to 5 eggs for 11 to 13 days. Both members of the pair feed the young. The young leave the nest 10 to 13 days after hatching, before they can fly well. The parents continue feeding the young for a few days after they leave the nest. Pairs generally raise a single brood each year.