This one jumped into the lineup when I snagged photos of it only two days ago, and as such, it represents one of the few that you’ll see here that I uploaded photos for, rather than pulling them out of the media library from their previous usage. This also represents one that was a bitch to identify. You see, this is a yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata,) but there are two variations of this, while apparently not subspecies: ‘Audubon’s’ and ‘Myrtle.’ Nearly every photo you’ll find shows the Audubon’s, which has a distinctly yellow throat, or the juveniles have buff throats. Only The Sibley Guide to Birds shows the Myrtle variation, and the white throat only appears in the adult males. I blew right past it on my first perusal of the Guide because this is only one of seven illustrations of the species. Even the online All About Birds guide from Cornell University has just one image of the adult male Myrtle, and you have to had already found the species to find that image.
If you have the faintest interest in birds, I have to heartily recommend using the Sibley books, since they’re the only ones that show all variations of plumage – male, female, juvenile, breeding/nonbreeding, different phases – as well as flight profiles and habits, ranges, and specifics of behavior. But alongside that, the online All About Birds guide is pretty slick and remains, naturally, more up-to-date that any book, which is important if you want to know the proper species; my Sibley Guide has numerous red asterisks alongside scientific names (including, now, this one) because they’ve changed since that particular printing. The online guide also lets you hear the specific calls, which is much more accurate than reading, “a short, high-pitched ‘chukka chukka‘ interspersed with, ‘pa-woggy, pa-woggy,'” (okay, I made that one up, but you get the idea.) Though they really do say things like, “Song like Audubon’s but higher-pitched with shorter phrases; tend to sound faster, more hurried, less musical,” [actual description for this particular species] which is of no help unless you’re already intimately familiar with that variation.
All that said, I knew that I’d found a new (to me) species the moment I saw the yellow markings, and was glad to get some clear-enough images of it – it was the follow-through that took so much time.
And then a day later (which makes it yesterday,) I came across this on theChive:
‘Course, I’ve been bird-watching since adolescence, but the cool birds, not the songbirds so much. Does this indicate that this is changing? Do I need to start a ‘life list’ now?