Orange-crowned warblers are fairly common spring migrants and very common fall migrants, a big pulse usually comming through Oasis Valley in late August and September. They prefer cottonwoods and willows.
^A warbler picking at a gall.
^In a cottonwood.
^In a weedy Cleome plant.
They breed in riparian thickets of the mountains in Nevada, including the nearby Grapevine Mountains 20 miles to the west. I have noted varying color morphs, probably representing the two or three subspecies passing through Oasis Valley. Most seem to be the grayer-yellow Vermivora celata orestera, which breed in Nevada ranges. Others are all bright yellow, and may be migrating V. c. lutescens which nests in western California and the west slope of the Sierra. A few migrants appear very gray compared to the usual, and are perhaps the Taiga Canadian race, V. C. celata.
(See Atlas of Breeding Birds of Nevada by Floyd et al., Univeristy of Nevada Press, Reno, 2007, and the Peterson Field Giude to Warblers by Jon Dunn and Kimball Garrett, 1997.)
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