Learning how to identify birds is difficult. It’s about to get even harder.
For the next several weeks, every migrating bird will return to Maine and declare itself. They’ll be singing and courting. Even the shy birds will become extroverts for a short while.
There is no better time to improve your identification skills, nor is there a worse time. It can be overwhelming.
Let’s make this easier. You may not be able to identify what a bird is, but you can recognize what it isn’t. That’s the simple task I’m assigning today. Go outside, find a bird and identify what it isn’t.
This should be easy. You already do it. If you see a sparrow on the lawn, you know it’s not a turkey. Well done!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an expert say it before, but the first step in identifying a bird is to decide what it isn’t. It’s so obvious, nobody ever mentions it.
There are too many birds. More than 200 species nest in Maine — 233 probably, but we’ll round down. Twice that many visit, some only rarely. How can anyone learn them all? Simple. Shrink the list.
You can sort birds in many ways — size, shape, color, field marks, sound, location, habitat and behavior, among others. Experts use them all, but even beginners can use most.
If you see a warbler, nobody has to tell you it’s not an eagle. If you see a blue jay, nobody has to tell you it’s not a cardinal. A bluebird is not a goose. A pigeon is not a heron.
What you’re really doing is sorting birds out into families — something taxonomists have been doing for centuries. It’s easy to sort familiar birds into dissimilar piles, such as ducks and owls, for instance. The challenge is sorting out similar families, like warblers and vireos.
Let’s walk through Bangor City Forest. There are many birds of similar size. Warblers, sparrows, chickadees, kinglets, vireos and flycatchers are all small. That’s roughly 30 little tykes in six different families.
But guess what? If you see a small bird, it’s one of 30, not one of 200. That’s still overwhelming, but now it’s a small piece of the whole pie.
Sorting out different families takes practice. Sorting out similar birds in each family takes even more practice. I suggest you take that walk through Bangor City Forest, and simply spend a morning identifying what the birds aren’t. No pressure.
To me, there are bigger conundrums than birds in the animal kingdom.
I don’t get how avid anglers tell fish apart. I still don’t understand canines. You’re telling me a wolf, a coyote and a German shepherd are different species, but a German shepherd and a Chihuahua are the same? Mind blown.
Naturally, once you’ve figured out what a bird isn’t, you can start sorting through the remaining possibilities to figure out what it is. Of those 30 little birds, you can separate the nuthatches pretty quickly. There are only two in Maine, white-breasted and red-breasted. Both walk on tree trunks, and they’re the only birds that can walk down head-first.
There are only two kinglets here, golden-crowned and ruby-crowned. They’re especially tiny, and fidgety. They have shorter bills than warblers, designed exclusively for gleaning insects off leaves.
There’s only one chickadee in Bangor City Forest, and you don’t need my help identifying it. The tufted titmouse behaves similarly, but its color and crest are a dead giveaway.
Flycatchers fly up from perches to gobble insects in mid-air. Other birds do it, too, but not as much. Aerial bug-snatching is the flycatcher’s trademark behavior.
Sparrows, on the other hand, have heavier bills, designed for crunching seeds. They feed mostly on or near the ground.
That leaves warblers and vireos. But once you’ve eliminated other possibilities, you’re down to about a dozen remaining candidates, and that’s a small enough number that you can start sorting them out, too.
And so it goes. All the birds fall into families, and once you’ve figured out what a bird isn’t, you’re working with a much smaller number to figure out what a bird is. We’ve all learned that way, without even realizing it.
Learning is a slow, gradual process, but soon enough, you’ll be able to tell at a glance what most birds are.
When you do encounter a mystery bird, you won’t immediately know what it is. But at least you’ll know it isn’t one of the birds you already can identify.
