Bird Watching for Beginners

A lot of birders have their first eye-opening experience with the avian world in their own back gardens - and usually from a young age. It could have been a robin nibbling on the berries on a frosty morning, a nuthatch visiting the feeder or a beautiful goldfinch singing on a warm Spring day. Whatever the species was, it opened the door to a wonderful world of wild birds. Most of us found soon after that while getting a handle on "garden" birds was pretty easy, the birds encountered further afield are another story.

Many are unfamiliar, only offer fleeting glimpses, or identification is elusive because they look just too much like several other species. When you are just starting out with birdwatching, identifying all of the birds you come across can seem to be overwhelming. However, before you decide to limit your birding to the confines of your garden, keep in mind that even seasoned experts run into birds that they can’t put a name to. Some birds will be a mystery but with practice, you should learn to identify most of the birds you see.

For better bird identification, try these suggestions:

• Study the field guide: Don’t just flip through your trusty field guide, take time to study it on a regular basis. Try learning how to recognize different bird families first before focusing on the species. This provides the framework needed for easier identification and makes it easier to learn about the differences between similar groups like hawks and falcons or ducks and grebes. Once you have a good handle on the bird families in your region, then you can start studying the species in each of those families.

• Field marks: This refers to the diagnostic characters that help identify birds at the species level. Instead of memorizing every tiny aspect of each species, just focus on learning the field marks to start. This saves time and greatly simplifies bird identification.

• Practice in the field: Whether watching birds in the garden or looking at waterfowl at a local reserve, see if you can place the species you see in their respective families and look for the field marks pointed out in the book. If you know which family an unfamiliar bird belongs to, identifying it may just be a question of matching it to a species in the field guide. Practicing also means learning how to use your binoculars better and learning how to look for field marks like eyerings, wing bars, and other common features.

• Take notes and make sketches: These practices might be the best way to learn how to identify birds because you are forced to truly study the birds you see. Start by writing down notes that detail what you see on the bird. For example, if you begin with the head of the bird, write about the shape of its bill, markings around the eye and on the face, the colors shown by the plumage, and so on for the back, wings, tail, and underparts. Next, try drawing a picture of the bird you see and attempt to copy its shape and the field marks that stand out. It might seem like a painstaking process but you will learn a lot about field identification!

What has been helpful to you in learning how to identify birds? Please share your stories in the comments of this blog or on our social media feeds - http://www.facebook.com/wildbirdfoods or http://www.twitter.com/wildbirdfoods