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 Tips for Choosing a Bird House

By Mary Fesio Mary Fesio
Level: Platinum

Having developed a keen interest in wild birds in her younger days while at summer camps, Mary Fesio has turned it into a sideline giving ...

It may be surprising to many but many bird houses on the market are not really suitable to birds. On the contrary, not only they do not attract birds but they can even be dangerous for the feathered creatures. There are some basic guidelines that should be followed when considering buying a wild bird house.

The most important things that need to be considered are the dimensions of the bird house. Different species of birds have requirements when it comes to space in the house. So it makes sense to look at the interior of the structure, the size of the entrance hole and the height of the hole from the floor. The entrance should be near the top of the structure and proportionate to the size of the species that is going to inhabit it.Secondly, the structure must have good ventilation and drainage to prevent little birds from overheating or drowning inside their homes. If the bird house is acceptable in all areas except drainage and ventilation, it should, at least, be able to withstand the drilling or sawing in order to create slots and drainage holes.The home should provide easy access for cleaning and monitoring purposes. This is usually accomplished when one wall of the structure is set on hinges or lifts out. Bird houses that do not provide easy access for cleaning or monitoring are not considered very good housing.Lastly, the material used in building the structure is very important. Care should be given that the building material is not toxic if ingested by the birds. Also, using metal material could cause the house to overheat. Therefore, metal domiciles should be hung in the shade.

Bird houses should be practical before beautiful. This is why stability in the structure should always come before beauty. Houses that are simply stapled, nailed or glued together should be avoided. Joints should be glued before they are nailed with rust resistant nails, hinges and screws.

When all of these criteria are met and birds still seem to snub their human-provided homes, the answer may be nothing more than moving the structure to a different location in the garden. Making the environment for those finicky aviaries beautiful and safe will make bird watching for the landlords a most pleasant experience.

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Article Submitted On: January 27, 2011