This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the orange-crowned warbler.
In the Northern Hemisphere, summer is warbler season, a time when these small, hyperactive birds migrate north to raise their young in areas with lots of insects. With their colorful plumages, often including shades of yellow, green and blue, they bring a touch of their tropical winter homes with them.
The orange-crowned warbler is more widespread and plentiful than other wood warbler species, nesting across much of Alaska and Canada, south through the Rocky Mountains and along the Pacific coast. It is also one that tolerates cold better than others, staying north later in fall and only traveling as far as southern states and Mexico for the winter.
Its scientific name, Leiothlypis celata, translates as a “hidden plain warbler,” saying it all in describing how difficult it can be to actually see this bird although you may readily hear it in the woods. Along with the chipping sparrow and dark-eyed junco, it is one of the species here that sings a trilling song, but it rarely stays in one spot long enough to locate it.
These small warblers are colored yellowish or olive-gray, with the only bright yellow color under the tail . Their eyes are bordered with thin, broken arcs above and below and have a dark line extending through them. The patch of orange feathers that make their crowns is only raised when the bird is agitated or excited.
Knowing where to search for these birds is helpful in locating them. Look for them in a variety of forest types with a shrubby understory. Rather than foraging in the treetops favored by many wood warblers, the orange-crowned feeds closer to the ground. It specializes just enough to share these dense cover-shrub levels with Virginia’s and MacGillivray’s warblers.
Orange-crowned warblers glean insects and spiders from leaves and buds, search through the leaf litter and probe bark and moss to locate them. Like other insectivorous birds, these warblers perform a service to our forests by consuming insects that may be harmful to trees.
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