northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another Veery from last spring. Veeries are in a fairly good-sized family of birds, the thrushes . Some of the other thrushes look somewhat similar, some rendition of brown on top and whitish below: Hermit Thrush Swainson's Thrush Wood Thrush Other relatives are red-breasted, making them a little easier to identify: American Robin Eastern Bluebird  And then there are birds that sound like they're related to the thrushes, but are actually a type of warbler : Northern Waterthrush This is the complicated world of the birds. May 18, 2023 at Willowwood Arboretum Photo 292813063, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

For Throwback Thursday here's a Common Yellowthroat I met about 5 1/2 years ago. Despite the "common" part of the name, I don't actually encounter these birds a whole lot; this picture was taken back when I was working at Alcatel-Lucent and going on my after-lunch walk. I suspect this is an immature female; you can contrast her with an adult male here . I don't think there's enough yellow for this to be an adult female, and I see no hint of the black mask that should be starting to form if this was an immature male.  Yellowthroats are a type of a much larger group of birds, the warblers . Though the males are pretty distinctive looking, the females are harder to recognize. September 18, 2017 at Murray Hill Photo 10808625, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)