Birding in Richmond and Essex Counties

double-crested cormorant
great-blue heron
canada goose
mallard
black vulture
osprey
sharp-shinned hawk
red-shouldered hawk
bald eagle
merlin
rock dove
mourning dove
belted kingfisher
downy woodpecker
hairy woodpecker
ficker
pileated woodpecer
eastern phoebe
red-eyed vireo
blue jay
american crow
carolina chickadee
tufted titmouse
carolina wren
eastern bluebird
mockingbird
brown thrasher
european starling
norhern parula warbler (I think)
yellow-rumped warbler
black-and-white warbler
common yellowthroat
northern cardinal
chipping sparrow
house finch
goldfinch

Inspired by the lists posted to the local Audubon Club listserv -- lists beginning to swell with fall migrants -- we hatched a plan to go birdwatching with the folks today. And sure enough, at a favorite spot of theirs we got a couple of trees-full of warblers. But the only ones we could agree on were the "easy" ones, above. Along with the one I (and no one else) feel certain was a northern parula, there was an all-over yellow one (2 or 3 of those on Peterson's notorious "confusing fall warblers" page) and "something orange."

(Copyright rules may be doing their job: I can't find, quickly, that page scanned online, but I can tell you that there's a Flickr pool called confusing fall warblers, that the edition of Peterson's field guide scanned by Google Books lacks that plate, that the online Britannica's entry on Peterson is kinda dull, and that the Roger Tory Peterson Institute has a site brimming with information, including this on collecting early editions of the field guide.)