This morning was my 32nd fall walk of 2020 and the first with steady rain.
Binoculars aren’t too useful in the rain so I took photos with a little umbrella overhead.
Right away I spotted a bird that seemed unfamiliar.
Too greenish to be a sparrow:
Too much yellow and black to be a pipit.
The white throat suggests Yellow-rumped Warbler:
but NO yellow rump:
a quick look at the “confusing fall warblers” page in my Peterson Guide.
I check the page that shows species with streaks or wing bars.
There are 15 of them:
Closest are Blackpoll, Cape May and Yellow-rumped.
It really looks like Yellow-rumped but where is the yellow rump?
Fortunately, I took over 100 photos and two showed what I was looking for:
a Yellow-rumped Warbler.
In all of these photos, I discovered a few of a different bird:
It’s clearly a sparrow, but the breast area is not clearly shown in the photo.
The above photo shows a broad brown lateral throat stripe and a white throat.
It is a Song Sparrow. Usually they are easy to identify because of the dark central breast spot. This was not visible in any of this morning’s photos.
Song Sparrow from another day:
Species list: mallard, American black duck, ring-billed gull, herring gull, downy woodpecker, blue jay, American crow, black-capped chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, yellow-rumped warbler, house sparrow, European starling, red-winged blackbird, common grackle, northern cardinal, white-throated sparrow, song sparrow. (17 species)
Some botany:
Today’s group:
NATURE POETRY
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run. – John Keats (1795–1821)
Miles Hearn