Garden & Backyard
Take your time. Look closely at the bird through binoculars. If you use an app, you can scrub back and forth in the video. If you’re still unsure about the bird’s identity, take notes. You can use a pen or pencil with a notebook, or a handheld digital recorder. Try to make a simple drawing or diagram showing the key field marks. See below for an explanation. You can use these later to remember important details, or to show it to more expert birders to get their opinion.
Identity
I’ve constructed a six-step process that should allow you to identify all but the most troublesome birds. For some species, one or more of these categories – colour, size or a significant field mark, for instance – will be more helpful than others. But all of these will come in handy at some point.
Size
You can rarely estimate a bird’s exact size. Without netting, measuring, and banding, you can’t tell if it’s five inches or six from beak to tail. Meaningful comparisons with known feeder birds can be very helpful, especially if they visit your Birdfy feeder at the same time. Is a it bigger than a house sparrow, or much smaller? Or about the same size?
- You can sort some of the birds that come to your feeder by size:
- Very Small (US: kinglets, chickadees, hummingbirds; UK: Goldcrest, Blue Tit, Chiffchaff)
- Little (US: sparrows, finches, warblers; UK: sparrows, finches, Nuthatch, Robin, Great Tit, Blackcap)
- Medium (US: Starling, Robin, thrushes, juncos, vireos, grackles, cowbirds, blackbirds, woodpeckers, orioles, Cardinal; UK: starling, thrushes, Great Spotted Woodpecker)
- Big (U.S.: doves, Blue Jay, crows; U.K.: pigeons, doves, Jay, crows, Ring-necked Parakeet)
Certainly, there is some overlap here between species, but this should help you rule out larger and smaller species in the course of the ID process.
Shape and Structure
Is the bird you see thin like a warbler or portly like a robin? Is it stout, a starling, or graceful, a dove? Is it erect, like a Starling or woodpecker, or held more parallel to the ground, like a blackbird? And is its bill long and narrow, like an insect-eating warbler’s, or stocky and heavy, like a seed-eating finch or sparrow?
Birds come in different sizes and shapes. However, be careful: a sleek bird on a warm summer day might look round on a cold winter morning. In winter, birds puff out their feathers to trap air, which helps keep them warm.
Colour and Pattern
Field guides, and indeed articles dispensing bird ID advice, often emphasise colour more than any other factor. And for some species, this works a treat — especially if the name of the bird includes its predominant colour, like that of Blue Tit or Blue Jay!
Some birds, called ‘lbj’s’ by frustrated birders, are just that: little brown jobs. They come in various shades of brown or grey. Unfortunately, these colors don’t help much for identifying the birds.
That’s why Bird Topography can be useful.
This is a classification of bird parts:
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Head
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Wings
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Back
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Breast
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Belly
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Tail
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Bill
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Legs
More specifically, it includes areas like the crown or nape, which is the top or back of the head.
Making careful notes on the topography of any unknown or confusing bird will aid you identifying what it might be.
Field Marks
This describes any clear identifying characteristics that will help this bird stand out from the rest of the birds on your Birdfy feeder. These features include wing-bars, which are usually white markings on the bird’s wing. Crests are feathers that stick up on the bird’s crown. Also, look for major areas of color that catch your eye when you first see the bird. Actually, be sure to take careful notes of these and which you can refer back to later.
Behaviour
Certain birds tend show specific behaviors, and this can help you identify them. Certainly, some species primarily forage on the ground, and primarily hop from place to place (although Starlings walk, more like we do!) Some will flit or hover in the air momentarily when they get close to the feeder, others will not.
Birds behave differently when visiting bird feeders, where there is typically a ‘pecking order’. Some species are dominant, sitting on the feeder for several minutes at a time until they’ve eaten their fill; others seem shy and jittery, darting in, grabbing a seed then flying off again.
Greater birds, such as jays and woodpeckers, do tend to bully smaller ones, although some tiny species – such as Blue Tits in the UK, and hummingbirds in the USA – are surprisingly yappy for their size and often manage to scare off birds many times their size!
Becoming familiar with the normal behaviour of a variety of bird species and groups isn’t just a good way to identify them. It’s also the key to a whole new way of understanding, which can open the door to a lifelong interest in the lives of the birds that come to your backyard or garden.
Jizz
Experienced birders can look at a bird — sometimes a faraway bird or a silhouette — and immediately name it. And they’re often right! But inquire why they believed the randy terror was that specific species, and they will often confess that the only reason they identified the bird was based on ‘jizz’ — its personality, or lack of; the way it moved, its general demeanour — even though they could see none of the specified colours, patterns or other telltale field marks of the species.
What they mean by that is some sort of feature such that it was only that species. It’s kind of like when you’re walking down a street and you, from a distance, see someone coming toward you. Long before you glimpse their face or any specific identifying characteristic, you know it’s one of your close friends or relatives. It could be how they walk, how they hold their head or how they move their arms. But if someone asked you how you knew who it was you might just say ‘I just knew’!
The word ‘jizz’ is often wrongly thought to come from a WWII pilot term. This term supposedly referred to an aircraft’s unique ‘General Impression and Shape’ or ‘GIS’. At first, it seems convincing. British ornithologist Thomas Coward first used the slang term “jizz” for a bird. He included it in his field guide, The Birds of the British Isles and Their Eggs. And that was over a hundred years ago, in 1921!
Birders have relied on field guides since 1934. That’s when Roger Tory Peterson released his famous A Field Guide to the Birds (of North America). In 1954, he published A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Birders are thankful for these resources.
Field guides now include a wide range of illustrations. These often feature paintings and drawings, but sometimes photos too. The Internet also offers countless articles, photos, and videos showing nearly every bird you can imagine.
A word of caution: a field guide is helpful for spotting birds. But it can also lead you to the wrong conclusion. Make sure you decide for yourself what you think a bird is first, and then use the guide to check your verdict. And that leads me on to…
Common pitfalls
Anyone with experience with birds can sometimes be fooled by a particular species, so what chance does a beginner have? But there’s often a reason a bird may be baffling:
Same species, different look
The more time you spend with birds, the more you’ll notice details. If a bird looks like one you know but is missing some color or pattern, it might not be the adult version. First-year birds can look very different from their parents, especially when they’re just out of the nest.
Or maybe you are familiar with this species only in the breeding season and now it is in moult and has assumed its (often less colourful) winter plumage. In some species, like the Chaffinch in Europe and the Cardinal in North America, males and females look very different.
And consider whether the bird might be sick or injured — that could make it appear quite different from its healthy cousins. Birds can sometimes show unusual plumage. For example, a leucistic bird has a color deficit, making it look pale or white. In contrast, a melanistic bird has too much pigment, causing it to appear dark or black.
Ships with different names, same or similar appearance
Some species are almost indistinguishable from their related forms, despite being distinct species. Alder and Willow Flycatchers look almost the same in North America. It can be tough to tell them apart as individuals. This is true in Britain and Europe for Marsh and Willow Tits. They are so alike that the Willow Tit only appeared in Britain in the late nineteenth century, even though it had always been present.
Escapes
Many bird species, especially colorful songbirds like finches and flashy parrots, are kept in captivity. Some of these birds escape or are released into the wild on purpose.
Sometimes, birds like the European Starling in North America or the Ring-necked Parakeet in the UK can form large breeding groups. They may become as common and familiar as our native species. But they will often be one-off, their strangeness befuddling anyone who happens upon one.
When you see an unusual bird, take notes. Then, check your field guides or the Internet. You should be able to identify the species.
Vagrants
A strange bird will appear in your backyard or garden. It won’t be a juvenile, one in bad plumage, or a sick or injured bird. Instead, it will be a vagrant. That is a bird that got lost, usually during its migration, and now finds itself in an entirely new place, a place where it is considered a bona fide rarity.
Species from Mexico and Central America can now reach the USA or Canada. With climate change, this is happening more often.
In the UK, warblers, sparrows, and orioles from North America sometimes come in autumn. They can get swept east across the Atlantic during hurricanes. You might spot them in gardens. The first yellow-rumped warbler, known then as the myrtle warbler, was seen at a bird-table in Devon in the winter of 1954-55.
And finally…
If you’re still confused or want to confirm your mystery bird, visit our Facebook group. You can chat or ask for help from other bird lovers there. They often know the answer and are happy to help. I will also watch those posts closely and share my thoughts on tough IDs!
Each bird that visits your feeder will be recognized and logged. This gives you a smart birdwatching experience. You might also want to add a Birdfy Feeder AI to your yard or garden.
