Anguilla, Antigua And Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada (B), Cayman Islands, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica (NB), Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, St Kitts And Nevis, St Lucia, St Pierre and Miquelon (B) (P), St Vincent and The Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, USA (B), Venezuela, Virgin Islands (British) (NB), Virgin Islands (U.S.) (NB).
Vagrant to France, French Polynesia, Greenland, Ireland, Portugal, Russia (Asian), United Kingdom.
Population
Estimated population is 13,000,000 (2010).
Northern Waterthrush (Parkesia noveboracensis) [XC518556]
by Doug Hynes from Hawk Rise Sanctuary (near Linden), Union County, New Jersey, Mexico (call)
Northern Waterthrush (Parkesia noveboracensis) [XC417354]
by Peter Ward and Ken Hall from Dairymart Ponds, San Diego County, California, Canada (song)
Subspecies
Forms a species pair with Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) and sometimes regarded as constituting a superspecies, but overlap in ranges occurs in southern Canada (southern Ontario) and north-eastern USA. Reported hybrid with Blackpoll Warbler (Setophaga striata) now thought probably to have been with Cape May Warbler (Setophaga tigrina). Birds from Newfoundland described as subspecies uliginosus, but considered inseparable from nominate.
The following 3 subspecies are recognised:
notabilis (Gmelin, 1789) - Breeds from Alaska and north-western Canada south to north-western USA (east-central Oregon to extreme north-western Wyoming), and east to northern Ontario and Great Lakes.
limnaeus McCabe and A. H. Miller, 1933 - Breeds central British Columbia (western Canada).
noveboracensis (J. F. Gmelin, 1789) - Breeds south-eastern Canada (eastern Ontario east to Newfoundland) and north-eastern USA (south to northern West Virginia).