You will need to invest in a thorough field guide for your area or the area in which you will be doing your birdwatching. Take a few pencils along and an eraser too as well as a notepad in case you plan to jot down any pertinent information such as where you saw the bird, what it was eating or what is sounded like.
This can be especially helpful if you can’t find the bird in your field guide and need to consult other books for identification. You can also just make notes directly in your field guide as most birders do. Keeping accurate notes is part of the basics of birdwatching.
Presuming you spot a bird whose name and family you don’t know - start by marking all those that are rare in that range and therefore not likely to be the mystery bird. This exercise will eliminate several hundred species of birds making it easier to find the right one from those that are left. The basics of birdwatching don’t require you to be an expert first time out so you need a little helping hand from time to time.
A second way in which to eliminate unlikely suspects is to consider the season in which you have seen the bird. Field guides that include range maps are an ideal tool for this purpose since they will tell you when a particular bird might occur in your area.
If it is early winter for example and you know there are several birds that are absent during this time mark them with colored dots and do the same for year round residents and migrating birds. This will help you to eliminate even more birds i.e. ones that are not likely to be in the area at specific times of the year.
Clues for Identification
Birds can be pretty cagey customers and it may appear to you that they are purposely avoiding being seen just to make your life difficult. The truth is that birds are cautious and this is so that they can avoid predators that may attack from the ground or air. They need to keep pretty alert at all times.
You may only see the glimpse of a bill or the flash of a tail so how do you set about identifying a bird you have only seen for a few seconds?
There are five tricks to bird identification that are going to make your life a whole lot easier once you have learned and practiced them. These tricks are based on the physical characteristics of the bird.
1) The bird’s silhouette
2) The plumage and coloration
3) The bird’s behavior
4) Its choice of habitat or environment
5) Its call or ‘voice’
It may be possible to identify a bird using only one or two of these features but other birds may prove to be more difficult. As you learn the basics of birdwatching you will learn to focus on a particular feature quickly and absorb it before the bird disappears.
