Birding Brevard: To Learn Birds, Start With Size

By Dave Freeland

If you are a beginning birder, or would like to get into this wonderful hobby, you may be trying to figure out just how to start learning. Having taught beginning birding for several years at the Buffalo Museum of Science and later at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum, I found there is a useful formula that keeps it all as simple as possible.

For this and the next six issues of The Limpkin, this column will outline the major steps in bird identification for the beginning birder. If you're a beginner, I hope it helps.

To start off, when first looking at a particular bird and before dashing off to your field guide, you'll want to collect as many facts as you can. Birds have a disturbing tendency to zip away into cover out of your line of sight too early for careful note-taking. So you want to have a good understanding of four basic identification factors right away: Size, Shape, Field marks and Habits.

Two other significant aids -- habitat and voice -- round out the six key factors in bird identification. You can work on them after you've made mental notes of its size, shape, field marks and habits.

In assessing a bird's size, it's very important to have a sound base of understanding the sizes of some very familiar species. Study a few common birds near your home. Watch them for a long time, several times a week, becoming very comfortable that you know that bird's size every time you see it, no matter whether it's close to you or a distance away.

House or English Sparrow is one good one to study carefully. Exactly how big is a House Sparrow when it's a few feet away from you, across the yard, in the yard across the street?

Study Northern Cardinal carefully, or Northern Mockingbird. Exactly how large are they in your mind's eye?

Pick out a common, larger bird and study it well, perhaps a Laughing Gull (up north, I always recommended Canada Goose for a larger bird to study, but we don't have enough geese down here in our beautiful state to use it as a birding yardstick). Once you know the size of a House Sparrow well and a Northern Mockingbird and a Laughing Gull, you can compare some new, unknown-to-you species' size with something familiar. "I saw a bird a little bigger than a House Sparrow," you can say, "or a bird the same size as a mockingbird." This knowledge is a big help when you open up that field guide and start searching for your new find. It's critically important when you ask an expert about your discovery. Just saying "it was a small bird" doesn't help much.

Field guides always tell you a species' size, so if the bird you encounter is twice the size of a mockingbird, there's no need to look at the warbler or sparrow plates in the book. No warbler or sparrow is twice as large as a mocker.

Where to Go: Fall migration continues through October, and a good migration trap like Turkey Creek Sanctuary behind the Palm Bay Community Center on Port Malabar Boulevard can be very rewarding. The trails and boardwalk overlooking the creek banks are excellent places to find those small passerine birds we all love to see in fall. When you spot something unfamiliar to you, be sure to note its size.

Bird of the Month: Buff-breasted Sandpipers appeared in several locations near Brevard County, and there's still a possibility of finding one at a place like the sod farms surrounding Viera Wetlands. One was there last October, a little late for this beautiful migrant "grasspiper" shorebird.

Your Question: Why do we have a lone female Wild Turkey in Melbourne Beach? I have lived here 36 years and never seen one on this side of the river. Did she fly here or do you think someone brought her here?

A -- No way to know for sure, assuming it's not banded, but I have to guess it got there naturally somehow. Because it's finding food and shelter, it is likely to stay rather than somehow maneuver across the lagoon again, but who knows? Maybe someone will want an early Thanksgiving dinner!

Forward your birding question to me at freela148@aol.com. I'll answer as many as I can directly and will publish one each month in The Limpkin.