Difficult Decisions: Identifying Female Warbler Species

Which are the most difficult wood-warbler female species to identify from one another?

All rise and bow to the Lord of Warbler Identification, as how doth one begin to compile such a lengthy list?

It includes such opponents as Wilson’s vs. Hooded; Yellow-Rumped vs. Cape May; Common Yellowthroat vs. Wilson’s; Wilson’s vs. Yellow; Bay-Breasted vs. Blackpoll (in late summer/autumn) – and I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of this identification game conundrum.

An interesting treatise on this topic appears at the following web site address:

http://www.tucsonaudubon.org/birding/duos25.htm

Here, the author (Larry Liese) explores how to distinguish female Yellow, Wilson’s, and Common-Yellowthroat from each other.

(The illustrator of the above graphic is George C. West.)