ID again (new bird this time)

[Amy Roberts]

Last one, I promise! This is my day for avian visitors! 

This guy’s been around a lot lately, but this is the first time I’ve managed to get pictures! He (she?) is super quick, flitting around from spot to spot, eating something off the bottoms of the aspen leafs. Very tiny (chickadee-size). Again, no luck with my app. You all saw how bad my guess was on the thrush. LOL. This one… I’m guessing yellow warbler? 

Thanks so much! 

Amy Roberts
amyrob...@gmail.com

[Joe Roller]

I'll take a shot at this, since no one else has so far.

We are told that this is a small active bird. With its pointed bill, we place it in the warbler family.

Next thing we do is look for field marks...and look... and look some more! 

Hey, I don't see any obvious field marks!

No wing-bars no, bright color to speak of, no obvious pattern on the breast and not much of a facial pattern, just an incomplete eye-ring.

The most obvious "field mark" is the yellow under-tail coverts. Only a few of the wood-warblers in our area have yellow under-tail

coverts. Prairie, Palm, Yellow, the 4 Oporornis warblers, Common Yellowthroat, Wilson's and Hooded. Most of those have some sort

of pattern someplace - facial markings, wingbars, color, etc. Of these, Wilson's is common in the 

fall and can be pretty dull - but if dull, it's a dull yellow, not the Grayish-yellow of the mystery bird.

Sometimes the ABSENCE of field marks gives us a clue to the ID! 

What warbler is dull and lacking in anything to catch your eye - just the broken eye-ring and yellow undertail?

This is a COMMON fall warbler in autumn in Colorado - an ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER.

Wait, I don't see an orange crown! Welcome to the world of misleading bird names!

How about Ring-necked Duck? You can think of many others. And I have to toss in a Texas bird - the Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet!

It lives south of here. Which flycatchers do have beards? That tiny thing has a name that's longer than the bird!

How do birders learn to ID little dull birds like this? BEFORE THE you-know-what virus, we used to go out together on "Field Trips"!

A fall field trip would surely run across this dull sprite, and the leader and others in the group could explain the info I mentioned above.

Alas, it's tougher now. But I do suggest trying to find a more experienced masked birder to walk with, staying six feet apart - a GOOD six feet.

Birding without a buddy is like learning to dance without a partner, I believe.

Joe Roller, Denver

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[Amy Roberts]

Thanks again everybody for your input! One of you asked if I had a decent bird book. I have three books (although how good they are, I’m not really qualified to say). I have Sibley’s Birds of the West, the American Birding Association’s Birds of Colorado, and the Readers’s Digest book of North American Birds. I spend a lot of time flipping between them. LOL> In most cases, I’m able to find the bird I’m trying to ID. Just had trouble with those two today — the thrush, because I was looking in the wrong family! And the warbler because man, there are a lot of those little guys who look pretty similar. lol.

Thanks again!

Amy Roberts
amyrob...@gmail.com




> On Sep 26, 2020, at 3:32 PM, Peter Gent <ge...@ucar.edu> wrote:
>
> Amy,
>
> It's an Orange-crowned Warbler, which is a terrible name as the orange crown is almost never seen except when the bird is in hand.
>
> Cheers, Peter Gent.
> Boulder.

>
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 2:21 PM Amy Roberts <amyrob...@gmail.com> wrote:

> <34DF2FF0-FE0D-4D53-96C7-5459D5DA0B71.jpeg><F341E936-CC82-490F-B808-87D5ED63A284.jpeg><CE7B3E47-853C-4562-9432-6E0ACC1F34FA.jpeg>