Bahamas, Belize, Canada (B), Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Turks and Caicos Islands, USA (B), Venezuela.
Vagrant to Jamaica, St Pierre and Miquelon (NB).
Breeds in southern Canada (southern Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba and extreme south-eastern Ontario) and most of eastern USA (from Minnesota and Maine), southern in Mexico to Jalisco, Michoacán and Hidalgo. Winters from southern Mexico (Colima and Veracruz) southern throughout Central America to Colombia and extreme north-western Venezuela.
Population
Estimated population is 4,300,000 (2010).
Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius) [XC54131]
by Paul Marvin from Cove Park, Knoxville, Tenneessee, United States (song)
Orchard Oriole (Icterus) [XC412386]
by Richard E. Webster from Newton, Baker County, Georgia, United States (song)
Subspecies
Icterus spurius (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) was provisionally split into Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius) and Fuertes's Oriole (Icterus fuertesi) by Stotz et al. (1996) but this treatment has not been adopted, following SACC (2005).
Closely related to Black-cowled Oriole (Icterus prosthemelas). Very closely related to, and often regarded as conspecific with, Fuertes's Oriole (Icterus fuertesi). The two have discrete breeding ranges, but no evidence of intergradation where ranges approach one another, and songs apparently differ. Birds from central plateau of Mexico sometimes treated as a geographical subspecies, phillipsi, on basis of larger size and slight differences in juvenile plumage, but such differences barely detectable.
The following 2 subspecies are recognised:
spurius (Linnaeus, 1766) - South-eastern Canada to central Mexico.
fuertesi Chapman, 1911 - North-eastern Mexico. Considered by some authors to be a distinct species, Fuertes's Oriole (Icterus fuertesi).
BirdLife International Species Factsheet