The bark is usually is a dead give away, far ahead of cutting, but that one looks odd, compared to the cherry we have here.
I agree that the bark looks more like black birch than cherry + wood color - but, black birch vs. the smell of cherry - hard to make a mistake. Nice work! Cheers!
Never smelled black birch while cutting but I can say with almost certainty this is cherry, that bubble gum smell is hard to mistake. Although if it was black birch I wouldn't complain.
I'm not there smelling it but black birch has a very pungent wintergreen (almost bubble gum) like smell that is much stronger than cherry. And this time of year black birch stumps will also pizz out sap like that stump in your second picture if that happens to be the stump. The bark on juvenile trees is quite similar also, smooth with horizontal lenticles. Were there catkins on the branches yet? They would be easy to make a positive id from.
All of the stumps in my area that I cut (aside from the hemlocks) have been pizzing like that, and no there were no catkins. The branches towards the top are also the standard cherry red limbs.
