Choosing a Birdwatching Guide

Now that the spring migration is around the corner, it's time to start thinking about how to identify birds. I think the first thing to talk about is your field guide. We will work on bird identifications in the next few blogs.

Sheila Buff in "Complete Idiot's Guide to Birdwatching" has a section on field guides. I wish I had known some of the things I learned from her before I jumped into bird watching. I hope this helps you newbies and gives you old hands a new idea or so.

In the beginning

First a little history. While the idea of identifying plants and animals is older than the Bible, field guides for birders didn't exist until Roger Tory Peterson published A "Field Guide to the Birds: Eastern Land and Water Birds" in 1934.

Peterson's book only covered birds of the eastern portion of North America. He organized the book by bird families so it covered all the birds in a systematic, concise way with illustrations pointing out the most important identification clues. The book was small enough to carry into the field and cheap enough for anyone to buy.

There are now Eastern and Western editions of Peterson's book with the dividing point located east and west of the Rockies.

Another popular book is A Guide to Field Identification: Birds of North America by Chandler S. Robbins, Bertel Bruun and Herbert S. Zim. It is published by Golden Press and is often called the Golden Guide.

My favorite field guide is National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. It has the best drawings and descriptions and room for note taking. But, as Sheila points out, it is bigger than the others and doesn't fit into a pocket. It is also more expensive.

Guides with Photos

All the books I mentioned above have drawings of the birds. I also have "Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region" by Donald and Lillian Stokes. I got this book after getting their CDs of birdcalls. There are fewer birds in this book, the pictures are photos that usually give only one view, but the Stokes' deliver more "personal" information on the birds.

I also like "Smithsonian Handbooks Birds of Texas" by Fred J. Alsop III. While this book has only one bird per page and it's a photo of a bird at that, there is also a page worth of information including a shadow picture showing the size of the bird in relation to the book. Clever.

Digitally enhanced photographs, a smaller-sized field guide with about the same information as the much larger "National Geographic" is Kenn Kaufman's "A New Focus on the Field Birds of North America." Kaufman does have a slightly different way of organizing the birds into groups. This is a good, if also expensive book.

I recommend any of these books. It would be a good idea if you are at all serious about birding to take a look at these different books and see which one you think would be the biggest help to you. A good field guide is worth its weight in gold.

Photos or Drawings-You Decide

Sheila suggests going with the books containing drawings rather than photos. Within any bird species there will be variation in colors and markings. Paintings average out the differences and give a slightly idealized version. I do tend to use my National Geographic more for this reason. But I also use Alsop a lot, too.

Which do you prefer?

Four Birdwatching Tips - Observing Bird Characteristics

Are you thinking about becoming a birdwatcher? Here is some information I have used in birding on how to identify the bird by the way its head looks. There are other parts of the bird we will examine in other articles.

1. Use the head

You can sometimes figure out what bird you are looking at by studying his head. To begin with, check to see if its head is a solid color. Note the particular color and any other colors on his head. Does he have a crest, which means does he have a pointed head? The Cardinal, Blue Jay and Tufted Titmouse are birds with crests I am familiar with. I just always thought of the saying, "bless your pointed little head."

Some birds appear to be wearing a cap or a hood. A dark spot on top of a bird's head is called a cap. A hood is a distinctively colored set of feathers that cover part of the head and neck. Some woodpeckers I have seen, like the Golden-fronted, have caps and some, like the Red-headed Woodpeckers, wear hoods.

Does he have stripes on his head? A bird isn't necessarily going to have all kinds of stripes on him. He might just have an eye stripe.

2. The eyes have it

Some birds appear to have masks, eyebrows and eyelines extending from the outside corner. The Loggerhead Shrike has a very prominent mask. I'm not kidding. Many Thrushes have eyebrows. Robins, by the way, are Thrushes. Other birds have patches of solid color on the "cheek" or ears (ear coverts). He might have eye-rings, as if he put on white eyeliner all around his eyes, like the Ovenbird. Other birds have dark eye-rings.

I have even noticed that some birds have freaky colored eyes-yellow or orange. The first time I saw a Brewer's Blackbird male his yellow eyes freaked me out. Since most birds have dark eyes, one with different colored eyes gives you a big clue.

Finally, check to see if there is a patch on his throat. The Orchard Oriole has a good example of a patch.

3. The bill is on the male (and female)

Next on the head, you need to look at the bird's bill or beak. It seems that birders prefer the term "bill" unless they are talking about raptors like hawks. Then they use the term "beak."

Is the bill long, short or in between? Is it thin, medium or stout? Is it curved up or down? Is the bill flattened, hooked or unusual in some way?

A bird with a long bill is the Belted Kingfisher. The Eastern Phoebe has a short bill. Blue Grosbeaks have very stout bills.

Also check the color. Some bills are dark, others are light, some have color and some have more than one color. Northern Cardinals have red bills.

This information is major in helping you identify your bird. A bird with a bill curved down (decurved) could be a Curlew. One with a bill curved upward (recurved) could be an Avocet.

Some birds' bills are so special the bill is a part of the name. Some examples are Roseate Spoonbills, Red Crossbills and Blue Grosbeaks.

4. Write or draw first

Let's hope your bird is still around after you have given his head a thorough examination. No, you may not shoot him the way Audubon studied his birds. But surprisingly enough, many birds will sit still long enough for you to get much of the information we have covered. Remember to write it down or maybe you can draw it. Don't try to look it up in your field guide until after the bird is gone.