40 NOETH AMERICAN WARBLERS. 



646. Helminthophila celata (Say). Orange-crowned Warbler. 



Breeding range. — The principal summer home of the orange- 

 crowned warbler is from Manitoba northwest to Kowak River, Alaska. 

 This may be considered the normal home, but many of the species find 

 congenial boreal conditions in the Rocky Mountains. The species has 

 been taken in several localities in the mountains of Colorado, where it 

 breeds not uncommonly from 6,000 to 8,000 feet and less commonly 

 1,000 feet higher. Its occurrence in the Rocky Mountains, however, 

 is more frequently that of a migrant. Manitoba marks the eastern 

 limit at which the species is common; thence to New Brunswick it is 

 of rare occurrence, though strangely enough it was once found breed- 

 ing at Brunswick, Me. It probably also breeds rarely in Wisconsin. 



Winter range. — In migration the orange-crowned warbler has been 

 taken along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Key West. It 

 winters rarely and irregularly as far north as Charleston, S. C, and 

 along the Gulf coast to the Rio Grande. It has sometimes been seen 

 in winter in quite large numbers near New Orleans; is a common win- 

 ter bird in extreme southern Texas, and occasionally occurs as far 

 north as San Antonio. There is no West Indian record of its occur- 

 rence as yet, though on October 6, 1887, and for a few days afterward, 

 it was not uncommon at Key West, Florida. 



The winter home of the great bulk of the species is northeastern 

 Mexico. It is generally distributed in the eastern Cordillera and over 

 that portion of the table-land of Mexico that lies east of these moun- 

 tains, south to the mountains about the valley of Mexico and to Mount 

 Orizaba. At the northern limit of its winter range it is found from 

 sea level along the coast of Texas to 2,000 feet on the table-lands of 

 northern Nuevo Leon. Farther south it passes to higher altitudes, 

 occurring at 6,000 to 10,000 feet in San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato, 

 Hidalgo, and Puebla. It is very common in the vicinity of Mount 

 Orizaba, Vera Cruz. On the Pacific coast of Mexico, as shown by 

 material secured by field naturalists of the Biological Survey, it is 

 replaced by its western form lutescens. 



Spinng migration. — By the first week in March the orange-crowned 

 warbler begins to move into the lower lands of Texas, but during the 

 first half of the month seems to make little progress beyond the region 

 in the southern part of the State, where it often winters. Even in 

 the vicinity' of San Antonio, Tex. , most of the dates of ariival are as 

 late as the last week of March. The first bird was seen April 17, 

 1902, near the San Pedro River in southern Arizona. The records 

 made at Onaga, Kans., show arrival on April 17, 1892; April 26, 1896; 

 April 17, 1896; April 24, 1897; and April 25, 1898: average, April 24. 

 Eastward the species arrives at St. Louis on the average on April 27, 

 and to the westward it reaches the same latitude at the base of the 

 mountains in Colorado May 2-5. The average date of arrival at Chi- 



