Bird Identification

There are hundreds of different birds out there. You probably won’t be able to identify every single bird you see. However, armed with some basic information, you can probably narrow down the list and find that you might have a species worth studying.

What should you look for when identifying birds? Becoming an expert on visual identification takes time and patience. Some groups of birds are much easier to definitively identify than others.

The first thing to remember is: don't make bird identification hard on yourself. There are two general rules to keep in mind during your first few months of bird watching: 1) eliminate as many species as possible from consideration before you ever attempt to identify anything, and 2) the bird is most likely a species that commonly occurs in your area, not some strange exotic that blew in from a thousand miles away.

One of the easiest ways to exclude birds is to go through your field guide and put an "X" next to those that do not typically occur in your geographic area. Put these aside for the time being. By doing this, you drastically reduce the number of birds you have to worry about identifying from the 900 birds in your guide to the 300 or so birds that are regularly seen in your location!

By the way, don't worry about marking up your field guide. A field guide personally adjusted to meet your needs is the best friend you can have when alone in the field. Just make sure to use a pencil or permanent ink so that the words won't smear if you leave the book in the rain or drop it in the mud occasionally.

Another way to eliminate choices is to consider the time of year the bird might occur in your area. The range maps included with field guides display this type of information. Some beginners might even find it beneficial to place colored dots next to birds in their field guides.

For example, put a red dot next to birds that are year-round residents, put a blue dot next to birds that are only winter visitors, put a green dot next to birds that are summer visitors, and put a black dot next to birds that only pass through during migration.

CLUES TO IDENTIFICATION

The way that some birds skulk about, you'd think that they were afraid of showing off their pretty colors and didn't want anyone to identify them. And this is the case, no doubt, as they must somehow evade predators from both above and below. Often, their quick movements allow us only a glimpse. Still, you will be able to identify even the most secretive bird using the key clues to identification described here.

There are five basic clues you can look and listen for that will allow you to solve the bird identification puzzle: 1) the bird's silhouette, 2) its plumage and coloration, 3) its behavior, 4) its habitat preferences, and 5) its voice. This may seem like a formidable amount of information to gather, but in truth you often need only one or two of these clues to identify a bird.

Sometimes, the key to identification is as easy as knowing which clue to look for first when you see an unusual bird. As your birding abilities increase, you will be able to pinpoint the important clues with greater ease and certainty.

Silhouette - Shape and Size

As you become familiar with your field guide, you will be able to quickly categorize most birds into families using silhouette alone (remember, each family has a diagnostic shape and size).

This will immediately put you at an advantage compared to the average observer because by placing the bird you see into a particular family, you have already narrowed down the possible birds you could be seeing from the 900 in your field guide to only about 15 or so birds - the 15 birds within the family you have identified. As mentioned earlier, you can then further eliminate any species in the family that do not occur in your region during that season.

You can do this even in the worst of lighting conditions when birds are backlit, in low light, or in shadow. It doesn't matter. The overall shape is unchanged. Many birds are even identifiable to species by outline alone.

Of course, it will not be easy to accomplish this feat at first. You must learn to note carefully all the details of a bird's shape. Is the bird large or small, short-legged or long-legged, crested or not crested, plump or slim and sleek, short-tailed or long-tailed? Note every detail in your field notebook.

The shape of a bird's bill is also an extremely helpful clue that is obvious from a silhouette. Cardinals, finches, and sparrows have short conical bills. Woodpeckers have chisel-shaped bills for working dead wood. Hawks, eagles, and falcons, on the other hand, have sharp, hooked bills that make quick work of meat. Shorebirds have slender bills of all lengths for probing at different depths into the sand.

The beak is a telltale sign. It indicates whether the bird cracks seeds (short, thick beak), drills for grubs (long, pointed beak), picks stuff off leaves (short, thin beak), and so forth. Your bird guide can help you identify beak shapes.

Size is also an important field mark and field guides do list the size of birds next to pictures. However, if you don't have some type of scale in mind, these numbers are of little use. The "ruler" many birders use in the field is a mental association of three familiar birds with three general size classes.

For example, a house sparrow is 5-6 inches in size, a northern mockingbird is 9-11 inches in size, and an American crow is 17-21 inches in size. Now, using phrases like "larger than a crow" or "smaller than a sparrow," you have an immediate impression of the approximate size of any bird. You also have an immediate frame of reference for your field guide if you associate each of these three species with 5, 10, and 20-inch size classes.

Plumage

Plumage characteristics are what really draw a lot of people into bird watching - they like seeing those beautiful colors. The distinguishing plumage clues that identify different species are known as "field marks." These include such things as breast spots, wing bars (thin lines along the wings), eye rings (circles around the eyes), eyebrows (lines over the eyes), eye lines (lines through the eyes) and many others.

Some field marks are best seen when a bird is in flight. A flying northern harrier can be identified from nearly a mile away with good binoculars because the bird has a bright white patch on its rump.

Some families of birds can be broken into even smaller groups based on one or two simple field marks. For example, warblers are fairly evenly divided between those that have wing bars and those that do not. So if you see a warbler-like bird, look quickly to see if it has wing bars. Sparrows, on the other hand, can be separated into two smaller groups based on whether or not the breast is streaked. Look for other broad distinctions for other families.

Behavior

A bird's behavior - how it flies, forages, or generally comports itself - is one of the best clues to its identity. Hawks have a "serious" demeanor, crows and jays are "gregarious," and cuckoos are... well, not really. Woodpeckers climb up the sides of tree trunks searching for grubs like a lineman scaling a telephone pole.

Flycatchers, on the other hand, wouldn't climb a tree trunk if their lives depended on it. They spend most of their time sitting upright on an exposed perch. When they see a bug cruising into range they quickly dart from their perch, snag the meal, and then return to the same perch or another one nearby.

Finches spend a lot of their time on the ground in search of fallen seeds, as do mockingbirds, catbirds, and brown thrashers. Some wading birds, such as snowy egrets and reddish egrets, are very active foragers and chase their prey around in shallow waters. Other wading birds, such as great blue herons, are less impetuous and hunt slowly with great patience and stealth.

Even the way a bird props its tail gives some clues as to which species or family it might be. Wrens characteristically hold their tails in a cocked position and often bounce from side to side.

Spotted sandpipers and Louisiana water thrushes bounce their tails and rumps rapidly up and down as if doing a stylish dance step. Some thrushes and flycatchers, on the other hand, move their tails frequently but slowly, with a wave-like motion.

You can even identify some birds just by the way that they fly. Most finches and woodpeckers move through the air with an undulating flight pattern, flapping their wings for short bursts and then tucking them under for a short rest.

One group of raptors, the buteos or soaring hawks, circle the sky suspended on outstretched wings. Most falcons, another group of raptors, fly with strong wing beats and rarely hover. Yet another group, the accipiters or bird hawks, usually fly in a straight line with alternating periods of flapping and floating.