People have an innate need to order their world. Early on in backyard birding, most of us need to put names to the array of feathered visitors attracted to our yards. This is true for beginners looking at their first perky chickadee, as well as for those who have been looking at birds for many years.
Even Experts Get Stumped
My husband, Clay, and I don’t recall the first “yard bird” recorded at our home of 32 years, but the last one was as puzzling as any bird in our careers, and we wanted to put a name to it. From the backyard we heard a high-pitched, long, thin whistle high overhead in the dark of the night. We agonized for a week over this nighttime transient until a friend suggested the obvious: Black Scoter sea ducks migrating through the night.
We had heard scoter many times but just couldn’t place this call in such an out-of-context setting, miles from the ocean. Even after 35 years of birding, we still appreciate the satisfaction of identifying a strange avian visitor!
Clay was fortunate to grow up in a family that recognized and enjoyed the common birds around his Jersey Shore seaside home. His mom pointed out Northern Cardinals, Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and the like, giving him a head start on bird identification. When he was 13, his grandmother gave him a copy of naturalist Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds (first published in 1934). He remembers being bewildered by this book; it contained so many birds. “There’s no way I can see or ID so many birds,” Clay thought, yet a few days later, he used the guide to ID his first “life bird” (a bird seen for the first time), a Black-and-White Warbler in a neighbor’s backyard.
To ID the warbler, Clay did what all of us do the very first time we are confronted by a strange bird: He frantically paged through the guide until the picture matched the bird in front of him.
There is nothing wrong with this method (and we even used it a couple of times recently when daunted by an array of tropical birds while visiting Costa Rica), but it has huge shortcomings:
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It only works for boldly marked birds that you get a lengthy look at.
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It breaks down completely for subtly patterned birds that you don’t get a good, clear look at.
Had Clay’s first “life bird” been a female Blackpoll Warbler, a bird often very difficult to identify in its drab fall plumage, this story might have had a different outcome!
Reading
There are alternatives to merely thumbing through the field guide and looking for a match. One of the most important parts of any field guide is the introductory material, which covers how to use the guide and how to ID birds. We all want to skip to the pictures, but a key part of birding is understanding the various types or groups of birds, how they are similar and how they differ.
Through the guide’s introductory section, one can learn about plumage (the covering of feathers) and how it changes through the seasons (altering the look of a bird); as well as how to learn bird songs and calls, not only for pure enjoyment but also for help in ID, as all bird species have a unique song. For example, once learned, the Carolina Wren’s exuberant “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle” will not be forgotten — yet, be forewarned, there are numerous individual and regional variations in bird song.
Bird topography (or the parts of a bird) is particularly important to notice. A key feature in separating groups of birds is the bill, sometimes called the beak. Bills vary in length, thickness and shape. Sparrows have thick, conical bills, for example, and warblers have thin, pointed bills. While length of the tail, legs and the shape of the bird are all highly important in ID, the size, shape and color of the bill is always a good place to start when categorizing the bird.
The overall size and the general shape of the bird are also important aspects of bird ID. Jays are far larger and sit more upright than sparrows, for example, and some, but not all, jays have crests (a semiplume of feathers that is a prominent feature on some bird species’ heads).
Once you have a feel, or at least a guess, as to which group of birds your mystery bird fits into, color and pattern play a huge role. Many birds have unique coloration and diagnostic patterns; these are highlighted in field guides and classically known as “field marks.”
Identifying birds by field marks was popularized by Peterson (1908-1996), the “father of American birding,” with his field guide. From that publication forward, all popular bird guides have used arrows to highlight the features to look for when IDing a bird, features that will confirm the ID of any bird in the backyard or anywhere.