Posts Tagged ‘birding tips’

Birding Tip Series #8: Sort the Oddity from the Flock

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Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Sort the oddity from the flock. Uncommon or out-of range birds will often join a flock of common, but closely related species. Large, mixed-species flocks of waterfowl, gulls or shorebirds are good places to look . Here in Vermont, winter aggregations of birds by the edge of ice on Lake Champlain often contain a rarity or two. Several years ago, I was sorting through a raft of ducks that included quite a few Common Goldeneye (expected on the lake in the winter), but, upon closer inspection, one of the “Common Goldeneye” proved to be a severely out-of-range Barrow’s Goldeneye. Looking at eBird data for Vermont, that’s how Barrow’s is reported – one or a few at a time, in winter, probably mixed in with a flock of other ducks. In a similar situation, an aggregation of a few hundred (mostly ring-billed) gulls on the lake proved to contain single individuals of both Glaucous and Iceland Gulls – both rare in Vermont.

Another trick is to watch eBird, birding lists and other sources for reports of a species you’d like to see – even if it’s nowhere near you. Some species appear out of their accustomed range in irruptions, significant numbers of birds that leave their accustomed range in the same year, probably for reasons of weather or prey density. Both Snowy and Great Gray Owls are known for this behavior. Snowy Owls are rare most places south of the US-Canadian border, except in the far upper Midwest. However, in an irruptive year, numerous birds can be seen as far south as Pennsylvania, and isolated specimens are found even farther south. If you hear of Snowy Owls south of their usual haunts in some places, it’s a fair chance that an irruption is going on, and one may show up closer to you.

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Posted in Dan Wells | No Comments »

Birding Tip Series #7: Know Your Business

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Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Vireos are treetop birds often obscured in dense foliage. They can be very difficult to distinguish from one another. UNLESS you know their songs. Then it can be fairly easy.

This is true also of sparrows, wrens, blackbirds, thrushes, warblers, and flycatchers—most passerines, and even shorebirds. Birdsongs are important.

Bird books try to give you an approximation of birdsong. They “translate” the sounds birds make into mnemonics—like “chickadee” for that bird’s song, or “will, willet” for willet, or “old Sam Peab’dy” for the White throated Sparrow.

Tapes, websites and mobile apps are now making birdsongs much easier to recognize and memorize.

So, one of my tips would be to spend as much time learning birdsongs as you might their sizes, shapes, coloration, etc. Study the songs before you go birding and always associate birds and their songs. This will make you a more precise birder.

Let’s face it: we often hear more birds than we see, and we usually hear them before we see them. Birdsongs guide us to birds. And birdsongs help us tell one from another.

P.S. Try not to play tapes or mobile apps to lure birds closer, a favorite ploy by some birders. Overdoing this can chase birds off territory and cause other troubles.

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Posted in Entries by Gene Walz | 1 Comment »

Birding Tip Series # 6: from Zoe J. Sheldon

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Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Hmmm, birding tips… My favorite advice was from my college natural history professor, Steve Trombulak. He told all of us as novice birders to really look at the whole bird and try to come up with its “gestalt” – the essence of its entire form – through identifying distinctive shapes. Once you can recognize the “essence” of a sparrow, a tanager, a buteo, or whatever you’re looking at, then you can quickly zero in on the traits that distinguish species from one another.

I think that this has worked for me – really makes birding an instinctive thing. I know it’s not super-precise as far as tips go, but I think it’s my most useful offering.

Otherwise, I’d say:

1. Do some research and invest in quality binoculars. Then learn how to use them.
2. When you’re out in the field, scan the whole landscape constantly, looking for movement that’ll cue you in to a bird or birds, don’t assume you know where they’ll be.

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Posted in Zoe J. Sheldon | No Comments »

Birding Tip Series #5: from Rosemary Allen

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Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

1. Accompany an experienced birder but be sure to bring your bird guide and binoculars.
2. Have a destination in mind where birds have been spotted and wake up with the birds before sunrise or watch their behaviors as the sun goes down and follow them with as little movement as possible.
3. Pay attention to calls, movement, behavior, flight patterns etc. Focus on one aspect of a bird’s identifying behavior each time you go out …you will be surprised how well you begin to classify the birds. Classification makes identification so much easier.
4. Enjoy the moment.
5. Knowing the parts of the bird’s anatomy gives you a chance to describe the bird you are seeing.
6. Make birding a regular event, join a group, and plan your vacations around birding sites.

One of my most memorable moments was over thirty years ago in Florida. It was February and I was visiting my parents in Cocoa Beach Florida next to the Banana River when my father woke me up just before dawn dragging me to the back porch that faced the river, telling me that this was a once in a lifetime experience. And there before my eyes were birds of many species flying together lasagna style, some even on the water itself. You couldn’t make out the preserve in the background or the sky above. What a moment that was! Sometimes nature just has to hit you over the head to take notice but when it does you are always looking. Once you learn to see, they are all once in a life time moments

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Posted in Rosemary Allen | No Comments »

Birding Tip Series #4: Birding With Young Children

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Friday, May 27th, 2011


Recently, a radio journalist asked a little girl what was her favorite thing about books. She said that when you get to know a character in a book they are your friend for life. Learning a few of the common birds around our neighborhoods as a child is a bit like that. No matter where you are you have a few friends around you for life to keep you company.

Most kids are naturally curious about birds. Start looking at a few of them in the yard and soon you are peppered with question after question. How do they fly? Where to they sleep? Why do they lay eggs? Can they hear me? Do they know their mom? It can be intimidating if you are not a bird watcher yourself. But don’t be. Take a bird watching journey with your child and learn with them. Let them guide you down paths of exploration. It will be a rich experience for both of you.

Here are some tips for watching birds with young children:

1. Kids love pishing. No I didn’t misspell a word. Pishing is when a birder makes a hissing noise over and over rapidly with air from their mouths like a harsh whispering noise, pishhhh–pishhhh-pishh-pish. Often after a few minutes the birds, especially chickadees, come and join in with their own calls. They think you are mobbing a potential predator so it draws them all in on the game. Sometimes chickadees will come right up to a branch near your head calling. Kids love this game and they get to see some birds up close and personal.
2. Put up some bird feeders in your yard and keep a list of all the birds you have identified together that have visited your feeders. They will quickly become fascinated by the game, trying to add more and more species to the yard list.
3. Put up some nesting boxes near your house and then monitor them each year with your children. They will love to see who comes back each year and how the birds build their nests inside, lay eggs and raise young. At the end of each nesting season you get to clean out the boxes together to get them ready for the next. Children love to do work they feel are helping the birds they watch.
4. Read books about birds together or get a coloring book of birds. There are an amazing number of excellent books for all ages. A book I loved reading to my daughter when she was young was Flute’s Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush, by Lynne Cherry.
5. Sooner or later they are going to want to see birds through binoculars. You don’t need to break the bank on a pair of high end optics, but you don’t want to discourage a child either by handing them low quality or toy binoculars. A pair of binoculars in the $80-$150 range will serve them well for years. It may seem like a lot to invest, but this is a pastime that can last a lifetime. A great place to learn about binoculars is from Eagle Optics – http://www.eagleoptics.com/articles/technical-guide/.

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Posted in Entires by Kent McFarland | 1 Comment »

Birding Tip Series #3: From Josh Haas

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Thursday, May 26th, 2011

1) Figure out what it ISN’T
My number 1 philosophy in birding is to figure out what it ISN’T. Bird ID is all about narrowing down by bird families to get closer and closer to the actual ID of the bird you’re looking at. With practice and time, this gets easier. For example, when a small dark bird flies over that’s about 6 inches long, you can easily cross hundreds of birds off the list of possibilities.

2) Use range maps
While many aspiring birders ignore those little maps on each page of most field guides, they can be a huge help in IDing species. A range map can aid in narrowing down. If I’m in South Carolina in January and see a shorebird that appears to be a Dowitcher, a quick view of the Range maps for Long & Short-billed Dowitcher shows the Long-billed as wintering in South Carolina while the Short-billeds are well south of even Florida in January.

3) Spend more time on the bird, not in your field guide
When you find a bird in your binoculars that you don’t know, don’t immediately get out your field guides. Look for subtle details for as long as the bird will allow that you can THEN go to your field guide to figure out what it was. Look for leg color, body & wing shape, eye rings, stripes or lines on the head & wings, and most importantly look for behaviors. For example, in Michigan many are confused when they see Pewees and Phoebes. One of the quickest ways to tell the difference is the tail. Phoebes flick their tails often, especially after landing.

4) Habitat
Along with using range maps, use Habitat for narrowing down birds within family groups. For example, if you see what you know is a Wren species, look at the surroundings to help figure out which wren it is. If you are in a Marsh (close to water with cat-tails) and you also see many Red-winged Blackbirds around, you would be looking at a Marsh Wren.

5) Birds don’t read the same books as we do
It’s important to realize that while the above tips can help 90% of the time, there are always those times when you see birds in areas they’re not supposed to be or behaving completely opposite to what the guides tell us. Don’t get frustrated. Use these experiences as learning opportunities. Get outside and always have fun birding!!!

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Posted in Entries by Josh Haas | 1 Comment »

Birding Tip Series #2: From Tom Wood

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Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Tip#1: To a beginning birder, the sight of a field guide with over 800 species of North American birds must look intimidating. Don’t worry; your task is not really to sort through all those birds one by one to find the one you’re looking at. Bird i.d. is really a process of elimination. Most beginners already know the general types of birds. Is it a hawk? A duck? A wading bird? Songbird? You’ve already narrowed it down to a smaller subset. With experience you will get a feel for the different look and behavior of warblers, flycatchers, wrens and such. Look at the range maps or checklists and see which of the remaining birds occur in your area at this particular time of year. Another group eliminated. Now, from the remaining birds look at size, color, shape, behavior and whittle the list down some more.

The Audubon Bird Guide makes it easy to work through the process of elimination. The advanced search feature allows you to pick the state, month, habitat, size and color of your mystery bird. This shortcut should get the choices down to a manageable level in a hurry and is simply the method that good birders have used for decades to arrive at an i.d. computerized for your convenience. Birding has never been so easy. A caveat – birds don’t always read the range maps and sometimes show up in places they should not occur. That’s part of the fun.

Tip # 2 Imagine that an alien life form met you on one of your birding trips far from town. Once he/she categorized your appearance as the typical “human”, a field guide to life on earth is circulated to all the other aliens. Will they recognize Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, Danny DeVito and Lady Gaga as human too? Well maybe not Lady Gaga. My point is, as great as the photos on Audubon Guides or the illustration in a field guide are, not every bird is going to look like the picture in the book. Birds that are molting or in immature or aberrant plumage may appear very different from the one shown. Sometimes birds are just having a “bad feather day” and appear disheveled or dirty. Some birds molt in new feathers with tips that mask their bright colors. As those tips wear away with time the bird becomes brighter and more colorful. Other go into a dull “eclipse” plumage, losing some of their showy field marks. Learning behavior and body language of familiar birds can help you see through their disguises.

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Posted in Tom Wood | No Comments »

Birding Tip Series #1: Probability Birding

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Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

When I first began to bird I imagined that if, for example, I wished to find a cactus wren, it was sufficient to drive down into the desert – the appropriate habitat – and look. It was through the kind suggestions of the local birding community I learned that to see cactus wrens I needed to travel to the Beaver Dam Mountains. This is the only desert area in Utah in which the birds have ever been reported. The same holds true for many other species of interest. If I want to see pine grosbeaks I have to visit certain mountains but should not waste my time at others. Purple martins are only found in a handful of the state’s quaking aspen forests, not all. Greater roadrunners are found in southwestern Utah but rarely in southeastern Utah, even though both areas are mostly desert. And so on. In short, birds are not always where you think they should be, even when the habitat is apparently ideal. They are in fact where you find them, or, where others find them for you.

I learned that many birds are seasonal. Common ravens are always around but American crows are usually seen only during winter. Herring gulls and bald eagles visit during the cold months but are almost never seen during summer. Black-headed grosbeaks and Bullock’s orioles appear every spring but disappear well before the beginning of fall. And many species, like Nashville warblers and Cassin’s vireos, only stop here briefly as they pass through during the great migrations.

I also struggled with species that looked, to my unpracticed eye, almost exactly like other birds. How did I know whether I was looking at a house finch, a Cassin’s finch, or a purple finch? A Swainson’s thrush or a Bicknell’s thrush? A black-capped chickadee or a Mexican chickadee? A cedar waxwing or a Bohemian waxwing? Subtle differences in field marks aside, I discovered that reliable state checklists and species range maps are valuable tools in the decision making process.

These fundamental notions of habitat, time of year, and range are all essential in making birding simpler, more enjoyable, and more correct. They aid in determining the probability of what a particular bird may or may not be. The finch on the feeder outside my window is probably a house finch, given that purple finches are almost never seen in Utah and Cassin’s finches are usually found in montane habitat, not the scrub oak that flourishes around me. That thrush is likely a Swainson’s thrush, given that Bicknell’s thrushes are rarely seen outside of New England. The chickadee I’m watching is almost certainly not a Mexican chickadee, given their limited range in southeastern Arizona and their need for different habitat. And unless it’s cold and snowy outside, those waxwings in my neighbor’s tree are almost certainly cedar waxwings. Certainly a given bird can wind up almost any place at any time. But by carefully considering the probability of a bird given its known range, habitat, and season, many misidentifications can be avoided.

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Posted in Entries by Lu Giddings | 2 Comments »