Which bird is which?

July 26, 2021 the birds and the trees

For me, a big part of the joy of birding is the challenge of identifying unfamiliar birds. And because I’m fairly new to this pursuit, most birds are unfamiliar to me — which leaves me a lot to discover and enjoy! Here are a few examples from the past year.

One morning last fall, I spotted a new bird in our garden. It was sitting on the statue and even from a distance looked somehow different from the birds we usually see. It obligingly stuck around while I dug out my binoculars — and even turned to show me its profile when I sent up a silent plea. Once I’d had a good gander, it was over to my Merlin Bird ID app to look it up: an American pipit!

Another day, Craig excitedly called me out onto the deck and handed me the binoculars. “Look up there, on the telephone pole,” he said, “you can see its bright red head.” That, along with the unmistakeable rat-a-tat-tat, told me I was looking for a woodpecker. I kept my eyes on it while Craig consulted the bird book. We discussed the coloration and markings, checked the range… Eventually, we were able to identify it as a Nuttall’s woodpecker — a species I’d never heard of. There are lots of woodpeckers who from a distance look much alike — red caps, dark backs, white breasts — but small details differentiate the species.

In May, as I walked in the Painted Hills area of Oregon’s John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, I noticed a sparrow skittering in and out of the brush. He was quick, and I couldn’t get a good look, so I took out my camera to take a few shots. The photos captured what I couldn’t see in real time: this was a lanky sparrow, with a long body and dramatic striping on his head. When I looked him up, it was easy to determine that he was a lark sparrow.

Last summer, hiking on a forested trail near the Mendocino Coast, I was disappointed not to spot any birds. Finally, near the end of my walk, a bright flash of yellow caught my eye. The bird kept flitting from twig to twig, and I had a hard time keeping my binoculars on it. But finally I managed to get a good look: bright yellow, black, and white striping, and a striking eye streak. I had never seen one of these guys and had no idea what it was, but of course Merlin did: a Townsend’s warbler — and a beauty.

After that first sighting and identification, I began to see these warblers here in Alameda, even on our backyard feeders. I read in The Cornell Lab’s description of this bird that “On the wintering ground in Mexico, the Townsend’s Warbler feeds extensively on the sugary excretions (known as ‘honeydew’) of scale insects.” In our garden, where honeydew is scarce, the warblers make do with what’s available — in this case, the hummingbird feeder!

Expanding my known world

These are some more of the things I love about birding: bringing a bit of the natural world into focus, paying close attention to details that would otherwise pass unremarked, indulging my curiosity, discovering and identifying birds I’ve never even heard of — like the pipit. I could easily have dismissed that little fellow as just another LBB (little brown bird, in case you’re wondering). Instead, I got curious. Through my binoculars, I could examine and marvel at the beauty of his streaky breast and the slim, dainty bill that clearly distinguished him from a sparrow. And now that I have noticed this unassuming bird, I should be able to recognize it when I see it again — and so my world expands.

Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days & Collect (1882) includes a passage that caught my attention. After making notes about a few of the birds he had noticed one day, Whitman goes on to say:

Many [birds] I cannot name; but I do not very particularly seek information. (You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness — perhaps ignorance, credulity — helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentiment of feather’d, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally. I repeat it— don’t want to know too exactly, or the reasons why. 

I couldn’t disagree more! I want to know what birds I’m looking at — and knowing more about them makes me enjoy them even more. Plus, figuring out what birds I’m looking at is a great part of the fun. Each unfamiliar bird is a puzzle (and I do love puzzles!) and an invitation to observe and inquire and discover. Yay! I think it’s much more interesting to figure out an identification for myself than just having someone tell me, “Oh, that’s a blibbering humdinger.”

While I’m absurdly pleased whenever I identify a “new” bird, even looking intently at birds I already “know” offers its own delights. The other morning I stood and stared through the binoculars at the lesser goldfinches on our feeders. From a distance they look to be mostly a drab olive; only when I see them up close can I fully appreciate the beautiful dapples and stripes of their coloring.

Confessions of a newbie

Identifying birds is fun but it can also be a real challenge — and you can easily get it wrong. Maybe you didn’t see it very well or you missed a key feature. Birds of different species can look much alike, while different individuals in the same species can look nothing alike. When you throw in the complications of age and sex and region, it can be hard to be sure of what you are seeing.

In the time since my sighting of the American pipit, which happened in my earliest days of trying to figure out which bird was which, I’ve wondered occasionally about my ID. Was that little bird really a pipit?

A few months later, we saw and identified a hermit thrush, which shares the slender bill, spotted breast, and brown back of the pipit. I had had a good look at the hermit thrush and felt pretty sure of that ID — but it also looked awfully like that bird which I had thought was a pipit.

And then this past week, I saw my first juvenile Western bluebird, which also has similar traits (and whose blue wing edges and tail are not always noticeable). So what sort was that first bird? I still want to think it was a pipit but, alas, with no photo to examine, I will never know for sure.

How to identify an unfamiliar bird

This my approach — which I will doubtless revise, as I learn more. In the meantime, with Merlin’s help, this is what I’ve come up with:

  1. A good visual examination through binoculars is the first step, but birds too often won’t sit still long enough for a good look. So I try to make quick mental notes of key features — and I undoubtedly miss things. And even if I do get a good look, I have to rely on my memory once the bird has flown — and memory, as we all know, is notoriously unreliable.
  2. Which brings me to my second step: take a picture if you can. A good photo preserves the evidence and can show you details that you didn’t take in with your eyes.
  3. Use the Merlin Bird ID app (or another such — or a good guidebook) to come up with possible identities for your mystery bird. Often you’ll find a clear visual match — but sometimes not. The silhouette looks right, for example, but the colors are wrong. So look through the various photos of your most-likely candidates to see if any of the other colorations look like what you saw.
  4. Consult the range maps for any likely birds. (Merlin automatically filters out birds that do not frequent the area).
  5. Read the descriptions of behaviors and habitat to help nail down an identification.
  6. Check their song against recorded versions. Merlin can now identify a bird by its song alone! Or play their song aloud and see if they respond. (Some birders are opposed to this approach, fearing that it can confuse or upset the birds, so I use it only rarely.)
  7. Consult a pro. There are lots of very experienced birders out there who probably already know what your mystery bird is.

Even with all this, identifying a bird can be hard — and one can easily get it wrong!

Birding can be an exercise in humility.
So here’s to doing your best — and asking for help when you need it! 

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