… catches the bird. While it’s not wise to be an early worm, being an early birder pays off. You’ll see more birds than those who sleep in and, if you’re a bird photographer, you’ll have better light to capture them by.
I was once again reminded of this during a couple of back-to-back visits to the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge, in south-central Colorado.
If you missed last Monday’s Part 1, be sure to read that post first. Now I’ll continue with my identification checklist.
What does it look like?
This is the obvious one, but even here there are often too many details to take them all in at once. I usually start with color, and “general impression of size and shape” (GISS). Are there any obvious marks that might narrow things down?
If the bird is still posing for me, I move to the details. What color is the eye, and is there an eye-ring? What about the beak? Long or short, pointed (for bug-catching) or wedge-shaped (for seed-cracking), curving or straight? On a sitting bird, do the wings protrude past the tail? What color are the legs and feet? Is there anything else that stands out?
What in the world is that bird? Birding someplace new is fun and exciting, but it’s also a challenge. How do you make a trip list if you can’t identify the birds you are seeing?
I normally post a bird ID quiz on the first Monday of the month. Today and next week, I thought I’d share about the mental checklist I go through when I’m trying to ID a bird I don’t immediately recognize.
I get to travel a bit. In addition to field trips here in Colorado, I’ve been birding in southern Texas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and the west coast. I was really excited when we went to Puerto Rico several years ago. We stayed at a friend’s time share ideally situated between a wildlife refuge and a bird sanctuary. I was having so much fun, I almost didn’t notice the 99° temperatures or the 99% humidity. Almost.
I admit it—I’m terrible at identifying bird sounds. They can screech and chirp and warble and coo all they want, and I have no idea who’s making the racket. Well, that’s not quite true. I do recognize really easy birds such as a Spotted Towhee, Canyon Wren, Swainson’s Thrush, Townsend’s Solitaire, or Cactus Wren (right). I can identify a chickadee’s “chick-a-dee-dee-dee,” too, but I can’t tell a Black-capped from a Mountain without looking.
It’s all right to rely on my (rather poor) eyesight during the winter, when there are no leaves on the trees, but I miss too many birds the rest of the year—and if I do see them, I can’t identify them. It’s not from lack of trying. I can listen to a recording and try to fix it in my mind, but a minute later I have no recollection of what I just heard. I need help.
I make it a point to generate my own material for this blog. I research and write the articles, I take most of the photos. However, once in a while I come across another blogger’s post that is so well done, and so helpful, that it makes no sense for me to try and do better.
In this case, Greg Gillson has written a post called “How NOT to report a rare bird.” This caught my attention because I have, in fact, had occasion to report a rare bird (although not as often as I could wish!) and I really had no idea what I was doing.
Please click on over to Birding is Fun and read Greg’s article. He is concise, informative, and entertaining.
Last August I posted my suggestion that we add inanimate objects to our life lists. For some reason, my idea didn’t meet with the enthusiasm I had hoped for. Still, I think it has merit. Birders love to catalog things, and think of all the different kinds of beer cans, water bottles, plastic bags, and similar items we can enjoy identifying and collecting.
In any case, I’m not giving up. Perhaps we balk at trash and rocks, but how about other living objects we might mistakenly perceive as birds? Surely we can consider such additions as…
Some years ago, my friend and I were out birding here in Colorado. It was a month or so after Hurricane Katrina had inundated the Gulf Coast, but that fact was far from our minds on that early morning in August. We had stopped at a little pond alongside the road to check out the ducks and waders, when we spotted a large brown-striped bird standing at the edge of the water. It looked a lot like the bird in this photo (which is courtesy of Laura Gooch via WikiCommons—thank you).
At the time, we were both fairly new birders. We didn’t own one scope between us. As the bird was on the far shore, we took turns squinting through our binos and consulting our field guide. Our view wasn’t nearly as good as the photo here.
Sunflowers may resemble a huge yellow sun towering overhead, but their name comes from their ability to keep their “face” turned toward the sun. Everyone recognizes a conventional sunflower with its huge dark disk surrounded by yellow petals, set atop a sturdy stalk that may reach over eight feet in height. A quick tour of a seed catalog shows that this is just the beginning. Breeders have developed shorter plants (as low as two feet) and an expanded palette of hues ranging from mahogany through orange to lemon yellow, white, and even soft rose to wine-red. Many types sport more than one color.
My granddaughter, Willow, is only a month old, so it’s a bit too soon to be buying her binos and a field guide. Still, I’m looking forward to our first adventures outside, watching her joy as she discovers grass and flowers and ladybugs and, yes, birds. I hope she’ll be as fascinated with God’s creation as I am.
Since I hope to create a budding birder, I want to make sure I go about this in the right way. You can’t force a kid to love nature. So I’m already reading articles and talking to birding parents and grandparents about what works and what I should avoid.
“I’m interested in learning how to watch birds. How can I get started?”
The question was music to my ears. Who doesn’t love to share their passion with someone else? It wasn’t so long ago that I was a new birder, trying to juggle a crummy pair of old binoculars with a mysterious field guide, all while trying (unsuccessfully) to keep an eye on the bird I was trying to identify. I’ve come a ways since those early days and even though I still have much to learn, I’m eager to pass on my limited birding skills.
Mountain Plover 