All of us bird watchers at one time or another have found ourselves squinting at a bird saying “what is that?” With the hundreds of bird species found in the U.S. alone, there are a lot to choose from. Being good at identifying birds is a skill that, like any other, you gain with patience and practice. In this article we are going to discuss how to identify birds by discussing all the key things to look for, and tips on how to get started.
How to identify birds in your backyard
Birders skilled in identification aren’t just looking at color or stripe patterns. Those things are important, but there are many other things to take into consideration to narrow down your choices. Let’s look at the five main categories of information we want to collect about a bird in order to make an ID.
Five Bird Identification Categories
- Location & Habitat
- Color
- Shape & Size
- Patterns & Markings
- Movement & Behaviors
Let’s start with one that is simple, but often overlooked.
1. Location & Habitat
Range
Before you drive yourself crazy looking at the minute details of the bird, start broadly by considering the state you are in, and what time of year it is. This is where having a range map is so helpful. You can find them online at sites like Cornell’s All About Birds, or in most field guides. You can rule out a lot of birds by knowing when and where they are likely to be present.
For example, unless you are very experienced, a Carolina chickadee looks identical to a Black-capped chickadee. But if you are in Massachusetts you don’t need to wonder which you are seeing because these chickadees have very specific ranges. If you live in New England it’s a Black-capped and if you’re in the southeast it’s a Carolina. Many similar looking birds have their own ranges in different parts of the country and rarely, or never, meet. That is a quick way to rule something out.
Time of year you see the bird matters too, since many birds migrate. Range maps will tell you if a bird is located in your state all year, or if it only shows up during spring-summer or fall-winter.
Habitat
Once you’ve ruled out birds that would be unlikely for your area, think about the immediate habitat you saw them in. Open field? Swamp? At the beach? In a dense forest? If you are convinced the bird you saw was a type of tern, but you are nowhere near the ocean, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree.
Habitat can be especially helpful when you think you’ve narrowed it down to a species, like sparrows, but there are many possible sparrows in your area and they all look similar. A field guide will help point out the specific habitats each bird is most likely to be found in.
2. Color
Color is perhaps the most obvious thing we think of when trying to identify a bird. For most of us it is the first thing our brain catalogs. Full body bright colors are actually in the minority for U.S. birds, so it can really make identification easy if the bird is all red or all blue.
But smaller splashes of color can be an excellent way to differentiate birds. For example in backyards, female House Finches are often confused with Pine Siskins. While not the only way to tell them apart, one of the quickest is the small streak of yellow siskins have on the edge of their wings and tail.
Much of the time, you will be working with shades of gray or brown. In that case, notice any little nuances you can. Try to identify hues, for example was it a light tan colored brown or a rich chestnut brown? Was the shade of brown different on one part of the body than the others? And if all you can see is light or dark, note that too. Which areas of the body were darkly colored and which were lighter?
