I’m not sure what this is

Q Here are three photos taken on 23 September in Scotsdale (Phoenix) Arizona . I think that the bird is a warbler or possibly a vireo. I have looked through a couple of guides but cannot find anything similar. Could you please ID it? Jon Mitchell

ANorth American warblers, for that is what this bird is, are definitely tricky in autumn (at least for inexperienced British birders like us), nowhere near as pretty as spring birds. And you have picked on one of the more tricky ones. The upperparts (from what we can see) are greyish, with a broken white eye-ring, and the underparts are washed with yellow, with blurry streaks of greyish. The final clue is the pointed, dark bill. All these point this bird being an Orange-crowned Warbler, which at all times of year is one of the drabber warblers, and rarely shows anything remotely resembling an orange crown!