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Have you ever tried to use a bird ID guide (or field guide) by flipping through a few pages hoping for something that looks close to what you saw? Getting lost in pages and pages of water birds or predatory birds instead?
If so, prepare to be amazed. I’m going to show you how to use a bird ID guide for fun and profit. OK, maybe not profit. But definitely fun.
Too many new birders give up on their new bird ID guide when they can’t find the bird they’re looking for.
Don’t be one of them: here’s how to get the most out of that new bird book.
Your bird ID guide – a forever friend
A quality field guide is a tool you will use over and over again, but which one should you get?
According to the National Audubon Society, the very best overall field guide to birds is the Sibley Guide to Birds , which comes in three “flavors”: North America, East North America and West North America.
It includes many superb illustrations (not photos) of each bird: as a juvenile and adult, sitting on a perch, and in flight.Color-coded maps show where to find each bird at different times of year, and lots of descriptive text details the appearance and habits each bird. This guide is my personal favorite, but there are other highly recommended guides and you may prefer something else.
Related: Best birdwatching tips
See also: All your smart bird feeder questions answered
Using your bird ID guide: DON’T cut to the chase!
Instead of immediately trying to identify some new bird you’ve seen, start by taking time to sit down with your new Guide and get familiar with it. Read the whole “front matter”, that is, the early content of the book that is applicable to the guide as a whole. Check the Table of Contents.If there is a “How to Use this Book” section, definitely start there.
I would have got a lot more value out of my 1986 copy of The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds – Western Region if I had only known to do that.Instead, I was intimidated by pages of photos and silhouettes in seemingly random order, and more pages of text with no bird images at all. I quickly concluded that this book must be for “professional” or “scientific” bird watchers and went out and got the Sibley guide instead.If I had only read the “How to Use” section first, I would have learned that this bird watching book lets you very quickly find the general shape of your target bird, see other birds with similar shapes and jump to exquisite color photographs for quick verification. I learned to use my other field guide by trial error, mostly error.Be smarter than me and read the instructions first!
Birds of a feather are found together in your bird ID guide
“I think we’re leaning toward the Common Redpoll”. Redpolls on the Sibley Guide to Birds. Photo © Scott Young. Used with permission.
Your bird identification guide may seem to be randomly organized at first or heavily weighted in favor of waterbirds, but they’re not.
Bird identification guides follow a 100-year-old tradition and organize bird species by the overall shape of the birds.The rationale comes from phylogeny, a “hypothetical relationship between groups of organisms being compared.”
It sounds complicated, but all it really means is that birds that look sort of similar have long been presumed to have evolved from shared ancestors and therefore in the same “family” group of species.
Genetic science is beginning to change those presumptions, but most guides still use shape as the organizing principle.The great thing about this is that when you see a new bird that looks like one you already know, you can look up the familiar one and find similar looking birds in the same section.
See also: Is a smart bird feeder worth the money?
Get to know bird families with your bird ID guide
Now that you know your way around your bird ID guide, take the time to get familiar with the general size and shape of major “families” of birds, such as ducks, jays, swallows and so on. If you can recognize these at a glance, it will be much easier to identify specific birds.Once you get used to your book, it will be easy to quickly find the right section for looking up a bird, but until then it might be helpful to use stick-on tabs or notes to divide the guide into sections for water birds, large land birds and smaller land birds – or whatever divisions make sense to you.
When not to use your bird ID guide
When you spot an interesting bird, your first instinct may be to quickly whip out your new guide and try to look it up.
Big mistake!
Here’s why:Once you open that guide, you’re going to see all kinds of birds that look quite similar, sorta the same, could be this one but without that white patch, et cetera.
You’d have to be exceptionally lucky to find the right bird on your first try.You’re almost certainly going to need to rely on some of the fine details of its appearance to pin down the exact species. And to get those, you need to observe the bird while it’s there.Your field guide will always be there, but the bird will probably flit away within a few seconds or minutes so take advantage of that time to get as much distinctive detail as you can. (Hint: Not sure what to look for? Check out Best birdwatching tips for some expert pointers.)
When in doubt, look at the range map in your bird ID guide
A bird identification guide will usually include maps that indicate where the bird is found, and some include winter, summer and migratory ranges too.
Maps in my Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America also include gray areas that indicate where the bird may make a rare appearance.Here’s why the maps can be useful – in 2005 I noticed an absolutely stunning orange and black bird at one of my feeders.
Black-headed Grosbeak – by Bill Bouton [CC BY-SA 2.0]
Since I knew nothing about identifying birds back then, I flipped through my Sibley guide until I found a picture that seemed to match: a Baltimore Oriole. That was an exciting moment, since I live in the Pacific Northwest.Then I looked at the range map and discovered that the Baltimore Oriole is never found in my vicinity. Not even rarely. Dang. Back to square one.Eventually I noticed the bird’s armor-piercing beak and decided it might be a grosbeak. Which it was.
Conclusion
A bird ID guide is an incredibly useful book, but unlike the dictionary, it’s not very intuitive to use. I hope this article helps you enjoy your field guide.
There are many very good bird ID guides, each one a little different. Find the one that suits you and spend some time digging into what it has to offer. You’ll get so much more out of your birding experiences if you do.Do you have a favorite guide and if so, why do you like it? Please share your faves in the comments below.
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