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A total of 15 species made the list, including 11 warblers, 3 vireos, and a
tanager. All of them valid and reasonable given the difficulty in IDing
birds from static images.  Sometimes, however, thatıs all you see, a spilt
second in time and the birdıs gone.  You either make your decision using
your first impression of the bird, or you go, ³What was da?²  If youıre out
there often enough looking at birds, or you keep looking in the books at the
pictures of the birds, that first impression of what the bird is, is
sometimes the correct one.  Several people IDıd some of the birds here
correctly, then promptly talked themselves out of it.

Letıs get on with it, back to the fall of last year.

The bird in photo #1 has a yellow wash on the side of the neck, breast,
sides, and has what appears to be yellow undertail coverts.  It also appears
to have a broken eye ring, a pale supercilium, and a faint dark line through
the eye.  Itıs difficult to see the bill, how long or thin it is, but it
doesnıt seem to be as large as a Pine Warblerıs bill.  Pine Warblers are
heavier overall than this bird, especially the head, more proportionately
so.  This bird appears to have a smallish head.  Both Pine Warbler and Palm
Warbler are more evenly proportioned than this bird.  They both have a
longer look to them.

Itıs even difficult to tell how long the tail is in the image, although it
does appear to be rather short.  The streaks on the breast and sides are
well defined.  The bird also has a white wing bar, the median coverts.

Since this is a still image you obviously canıt see if this bird is pumping
itıs tail like it was waiting for bus, but you donıt need to.

In no plumage does Palm or Yellow-rumped Warbler have the yellowish patch
behind the ³ear.²  Yellow-rumped doesnıt have a pale line over the eye
(supercilium), Cape May Warbler does.  Pine Warbler may show yellow on the
side of the neck, but it lacks the heavy streaking, and has a
proportionately larger head.  And, although it does appear to have yellow
undertail coverts, what youıre seeing is part of the yellow wash on the
rump, but you donıt need to see the undertail coverts, although it would
immediately eliminate Palm Warbler (not fair since you canıt see the
coverts).

This bird was in a Red Cedar, a mid dayıs shadow length from the Cape May
Lighthouse, Cape May, NJ.  When I first saw this bird, after first figuring
out what species it was, I thought it to be a young female, not so sure now.
 There are less brightly colored Cape Mays.  Any thoughts?

The bird in the second photo, leaning over to grab a snack out of the sumac,
has an eye ring like a Magnolia, Canada, and Nashville Warblers,
Blue-headed, and Yellow-throated Vireos, but you canıt tell whether that
ring extends to the bill in the form of ³spectacles.²  The eye ring is
white.  That takes care of Yellow-throated Vireo, even if this bird didnıt
have a gray head.  There are other birds that have a white eye ring  like
the bird in the photo, and the ones mentioned above, but they either donıt
have yellow flanks, white undertail coverts, or no one brought  up those
species.

Canıt see any wing bars.  Doesnıt matter.  What does matter is the squarish
white area on the underside of the tail, not the undertail coverts, the tail
itself.  Lots of other warblers have white in their tails, even more white
than this bird, but the squarish shape and placement of the white area is
key.  This Magnolia Warbler, on winged or dwarf sumac at the edge of the
Lighthouse parking lot, didnıt get what it was after, it came up
empty-beaked.  The lack of streaking on the flanks suggest a young bird.

As for the third bird, itıs bill is too small to be a female Scarlet
Tanager.

Tennessee Warblers have white undertail coverts and a dark line through,
light line over, the eye.  Philadelphia Vireo has the eye lines as well. 
This bird has yellow-green undertail coverts and neither lines.  Wilsonıs
Warbler usually shows more contrast between the undersides and uppersides as
well as the light and dark areas of the face  Wilson's has a definite
pattern on the face, like the other Wilsonia warblers, although it may be
very faint in some birds.  Wilsonıs Warbler is very small and dainty. 
Perhaps you canıt judge how large the bird in the image is, but you can see
that it is not dainty.

Bird 3 is all yellow-green, like an Orange-crowned Warbler.  There doesnıt
appear to be any streaking on the breast, at best itıs very faintly
streaked.  The bird is pretty much all yellow-green, even the eye ring
(which seems very bright in this shot) and the faint edges of the wing
coverts.  Even the feet and toes look yellowish.

Orange-crowned shows an eye ring, broken by a dark line through the eye. 
This birdıs eye ring is complete.  Compare this birdıs eye ring, and feet
color for that matter, to Orange-crowned Warbler.

This Yellow Warbler was foraging at Cape May Meadows, Cape May, NJ.  In
fact, there were two of them in that shrub.  Race?  I donıt know.  I think
it is one of the NW birds.

NOTE -HY, below, means Hatching Year.  The bird was hatched the current
year.  Where you said, in your emails, young bird or immature, I said HY. 
Since this was in the fall and I donıt think these birds have a distinctive
SY plumage, except for maybe...never mind.  Hy means young.

There's no doubt that it is not always easy to ID birds from photos,
especially when youcan't see all of the bird.  A little over a quarter of
you correctly  IDıd bird #1, about 40 percent got Magnolia Warbler, and
about 30 percent got Yellow Warbler.  Some folks didnıt venture a guess on
bird number three.  Some that did said it was the most difficult of the
three.  Heıs the results:


Bird # 1:

Palm Warbler-6
not aged/female 1

Cape May Warbler-4
HY1/female 1

Yellow-rumped Warbler-4
HY1/female 1

Pine Warbler-1
female 1


Bird # 2:

Magnolia Warbler-6

Blue-headed Vireo-5

Canada Warbler-1

Nashville Warbler-2

Yellow-throated Vireo-1


Bird #3:

Orange-crowned Warbler-5

Yellow Warbler-4
HY 1/male 1

Wilsonıs Warbler-1

Tennessee Warbler-1

Philadelphia Vireo-1

Scarlet Tanager-1
female


Thanks,

Greg




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Greg Dodge
Hillsborough, NC
brownbagproductions.com