For the past several years I’ve been puzzled by a bird sound I hear in the spring. For a while I thought perhaps it was not a bird, but a delivery truck with squeaky wheels, but why was I only hearing it in the spring and early summer?

Yesterday I caught a glimpse of what I thought might be the bird, high in the tulip poplar that looms over my house. I knew it was a warbler, by its bill and the way it was moving. It was black and white with a bit of yellow.

I ran into the house and Googled warbler images and found the bird on a web site — Myrtle Warbler. Then I tried to locate a myrtle warbler on the Cornell Birding site, only to be redirected to yellow-rumped warbler. Hmm, seems like more names have been changed…

I checked out the sound of the yellow-rumped warbler and yes indeed, that was the sound I’d been hearing.

As much as I love my worn copy of Peterson’s, I have to love the internet for helping me quickly ID the bird.