The Science of Birds - How to Identify Birds in the Field

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

In this practical episode about birding skills, Ivan Phillipsen dives into the process of bird identification. Listeners are introduced to a five-step framework for figuring out which bird species they’re observing. Ivan walks through how to use shape, location, behavior, coloration, and detailed field marks to gradually narrow down a bird’s identity.The episode highlights how our brains are naturally equipped to categorize and name things, and how even beginners often know more about birds than they realize. Ivan encourages listeners to start locally, study bird families, and pay attention to habitats and seasonal patterns. While modern technology like the Merlin Bird ID app can fast-track identification, Ivan makes a case for the joy and deeper learning that come from using traditional methods. He acknowledges the real-world challenges of tricky species groups, vagrants, and hybrids, but invites listeners to embrace these challenges as part of the journey. Bird ID, he reminds us, is not just a means to an end—it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of birding itself.Links of InterestBirding by Impression [BOOK]The Art of Bird Identification [BOOK]Peterson Guide to Bird Identification—in 12 Steps [BOOK]~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This episode, which is number 117, is all about how to identify birds, how to figure out which bird species you're looking at. This is building on a couple of other birding-related episodes I did recently. I did one on the pros and cons of traditional birding field guides versus mobile apps, and I did an episode on

how to find birds. So now that you've found a bird, you want to know which species it is. You want to put a name to the face. For example, is that red bird you're looking at a nor Northern Cardinal, a summer tanager, or a scarlet tanager, or none of the above. There are over 11,000 bird species out there in the world. So if you're brand new to the world of birding, the extravagant diversity of birds might be a bit overwhelming. Sure, 11,000 species is a lot, but you know if we were trying to identify an insect, we'd have over 5 million species to sort through. That's totally crazy, right? Anyway, rather than intimidate us, the diversity of birds is something we should

celebrate. I mean, you can spend a lifetime birding all over the world, and there will always be more wonderful bird species out there for you to discover. Learning how to identify species is a long-term gradual process. And I would say that this process is more than a means to an end. it's a key component of what makes birding joyful and fulfilling. At the most basic level, learning to ID birds allows you to connect birds with their names. And if you're into making lists, bird ID is obviously essential for doing that. But at a deeper level, this skill opens up your awareness to biodiversity and it deepens your connection to nature. It can enrich your life. That's certainly been true for me.

you have to want it however i'm not going to lie it takes some work and you might feel some frustration as a beginner just like none of us is born knowing algebra or how to type on a keyboard none of us is born knowing which bird is which even the world's most experienced skilled birders started with zero knowledge so i invite you to embrace the challenge and enjoy the lifelong journey of getting to know your birds. And yeah, I know, I'm probably preaching to the choir here, since you are a listener of this podcast. I can assume that you are already highly motivated

to learn about birds. You're already on your way. I want this episode to be valuable and interesting to beginners and experienced birders. Beginners will get a framework for bird identification and some tips along the way. But if you're already an experienced birder, I hope this episode will help you reflect on your own process.

Maybe it will give you some ideas for how you can teach other people the skills that you've already mastered. Okay, sound good. Let's jump in and get started naming birds. When it comes to identifying birds, even if you're a total beginner, you're probably more knowledgeable than you realize. Unless you're like two years old. If you're a toddler, you might not even know what a bird is yet. And hey, if you are a toddler, where are your parents? Do they know you're listening to this podcast? For the rest of us non-toddlers, we know a bird when we see one. It's got feathers and a beak and probably a couple of wings too. But here's the thing.

Even a total noob can take it a step further. They can probably recognize. recognize some major categories of birds. I'm betting the average person on the street can recognize an owl, duck, parrot, hummingbird, penguin, flamingo, woodpecker, dove, or vulture. And that same person might even be able to recognize a handful of actual species, birds like bald eagle, Canada goose, mallard, pigeon, crow, northern cardinal, and blue jay. Those are North American species, of course. People in the UK might know birds like Robin, Blackbird, Mute Swan, Magpie, and so on. The good news is that your brain has been primed by evolution and by your upbringing to categorize and put names to things. So we should congratulate ourselves for what we already

know about birds. It's probably more than we realize. As I mentioned, there are roughly 11,000 the bird species in the world. The good news is that the actual number of species you need to be concerned about, in the beginning anyway, is way, way smaller. The best place to begin is with the birds in your backyard or in your neighborhood. Now, if you live somewhere tropical like Costa Rica or Queensland, Australia, I suppose you might have hundreds of potential species flying around in your yard. Lucky you, but it's also going to take a bit more work to sort all those birds. out. But for many of us, the number of species visiting our yard is more like one to a few dozen. And that doesn't sound so bad, right? That's a very manageable number to learn.

And once you can identify some backyard bird species with a high level of certainty, your confidence will grow. You'll realize that by paying attention, being observant, and doing a little homework, you have it within you to recognize pretty much any bird on the planet. All right, I'm going to lay out a systematic approach to bird ID for you. And I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I haven't created some magical new way to ID birds. At the heart of it, you'll see that this is all pretty much common sense. And I've drawn from books and other resources on this topic.

Some of those books have something like eight steps or 12 steps to bird ID. But here I've condensed the process down to just five. That's right, folks. You heard me. Just five steps. Forget 12 steps. Ain't nobody got time for that. Using Ivan's patented miracle method, you'll get your bird sorted out in less than half the time. And without all the stress and crying and pulling your hair out in frustration. But seriously, this is just what I think works as a helpful framework for bird ID. There's certainly more than one approach, whatever works best for you. Let me start with an overview of the five steps, then we'll go through each in detail.

Imagine you're looking at a bird and you're trying to figure out what species it belongs to. Step one is to figure out which family or other major group the bird fits into. Here you're looking at the bird's overall structure and size. Step two is to consider your location and the time of year. Step three is to take in the bird's behavior and any sounds it makes. Step 4 is to look at the overall coloration and broad-stroke patterns of the bird's plumage. And step 5 is to look at the finer-scale details of the bird's plumage and body parts. At each step we are taking in information.

We're collecting data that helps us narrow down the possibilities. We start with 11,000 possible species, but each step allows us to eliminate many of them from further consideration. For example, if you're at step one and you feel pretty sure that the bird you're looking at is some kind of heron, well, that's fantastic, because that piece of data alone allows you to eliminate over 10,000 species. The heron family, our deity, has only about 67 species in it. So this is a process of elimination, right? Sort of like The Bachelorette or Squid Game. Now notice that with this five-step ID process, we are not starting off by looking at small details. We don't begin by zooming in to look at the color of the throat or the length of the tail or the presence of fine spots on the wingtips.

If we had to start by learning and recognizing all of these field marks for every species, then yeah, that would be tough. Bird ID in that case would be an overwhelming, seemingly impossible undertaking. But thankfully, there is a better way. Let's go through the process step by step. Step one, broad categorization by structure and taxonomy. Instead of tiny details, we start with broad strokes. We're looking at our bird through a coarse. grained lens. A lens so grimy and blurry that all we see through it is the bird's basic

silhouette, its overall body shape, its posture, and hopefully the shape of its beak, its bill. These aspects of a bird are more or less consistent, season to season, and from individual to individual. At this step, you're using your existing knowledge to sort birds into major groups, like duck versus raptor versus songbird. Birds in these groups have easily recognizable silhouettes. These intuitive, or at least familiar, categories often reflect real taxonomic units that biologists have named. We're talking avian orders, families, and genera.

The more of these groups you learn to recognize, the better you'll be at identifying birds. The taxonomic unit that I think is the most helpful here is the family. The bird species belonging to a family usually share many features that we humans can learn to recognize. That's why I like to make podcast episodes that focus on a single bird family. For example, I've done episodes on the families of hummingbirds, swallows, New World quails, cormorants, and so on. The overall body and bill structures of birds in the families I just mentioned are distinct, and that's true for many other families as well. There are about 250 bird families in the world. And yes, I know that's a lot, but when you're just getting started, you don't

need to worry about most of those families. Just start locally. You only need to concern yourself with the bird families found in your region. For example, here in the state of Oregon, where I live, there are about 65 families. And in my neighborhood, I bet there are fewer than 20 families represented. So that leaves me with just 20 boxes or bins or folders, choose your analogy, to sort my local species into. Now, just a moment ago, I said to use your existing knowledge to sort birds into their groups, right? To figure out which family your mystery bird belongs to. But where do you get that existing knowledge? It turns out that you need to do your homework, my friend. Bim!

I know, I know. Many of us have PTSD from all those years of being forced to do homework. But hear me out. Ideally, before going out birding, you will have spent some quality time with your bird field guide and maybe your birding apps like Merlin. As you use these study tools, pay attention to the family names

and the shared traits of birds in the living. families. Swallows, for example, birds in the family herendinity, typically have slender, sort of elongated bodies, long pointed wings, small rounded heads, and very short legs ending in tiny feet. Their small pointed bills open into a wide gap. As another example, birds in the family fringility, what we would call the true finches, are songbirds that generally have compact bodies and stout cone-shaped bills. Their bills are well adapted for cracking seeds, and they have short, notched tails. Again, don't worry about trying to learn all 250 bird families. Use a bird field guide for your local region and just focus on the limited number of

families in that book. Most modern field guides and apps are organized taxonomically, so by order, family, and genus. So, you've got your your homework. But hey, it's fun homework. Yay! I mean, it's not like you have to write a book report on weathering heights or solve 30 calculus problems by tomorrow morning. And if you're like me, studying birds and books like this isn't a chore that I need to slog through. Because again, it's not a means to an end. It's a pleasure. Finding joy in the study of birds using books and whatever is itself a component of birding. One of the books I have about the topic of bird ID is birding by impression by Kevin Carlson and Dale Roselais. This is a great book,

and it highlights the shared traits of bird groups in North America. Many of those groups correspond to a single avian family. And hey, you should also keep listening to this podcast, The Science of Birds, because whenever I make an episode about a bird family, I talk a lot about the shared characteristics of the species in that family. So I'll be your step. Buddy, let me help you with your homework. Beyond just physical structure, many bird behaviors are also consistent across the species in a family. So you'll want to learn some of these behaviors too. Which kinds of behaviors are dead giveaways for birds in a particular family? Or are at least fairly distinctive for that family. For example, most tyrant flycatchers,

bird species in the family tyrannity, are insect eaters that show a behavior. behavior called sallying. They dart out from a perch to catch flying insects mid-air. And in between their sallies, these birds tend to sit upright on an exposed branch or other perch. As you grow your knowledge about bird families, as you level up, you can kick it up a notch to also learn about some distinctive bird genera. Remember that genus is the next taxonomic level down from family. A family often includes more than one genus, and a genus often includes more than one species. For example, I did a podcast episode on bluebirds. These are the three species in the genus Cialia, S-I-A-L-I-A.

The eastern, western, and mountain bluebirds are similar in size and shape and in many of their behaviors. The genus Cialia belongs to the Thrush family, Tertidae. But bluebirds show some distinct features that separate them from the rest of their family. Okay, let's assume we've been successful with step one and we've decided which bird family or group our bird fits into. Time to move on to the next step. Step 2. Location and Season. To narrow down the list of possible species even further, we're going to consider where we are and when we are, because the region you're in contains only a small fraction of the world's bird species. This is where your bird field guide or app is going to come

in handy. You only need to be concerned with the species that are possible in your region. For example, if I'm looking at my Sibley Guide to Western Birds, that book includes 777 species. And sure, that's a lot, but it ain't 11,000. If I look at a book on just the birds of Oregon, however, that would bring the number down to about 500. And if we exclude rare birds, vagrants, and all of those guys, Oregon really has only about 350 regularly occurring species. And I can take it a step further. Using the Merlin mobile app, I can get a list of the species that are likely in the Portland metro area at this time of year. That list has only 181 species.

I can sort that list taxonomically to look at birds by family. Or I can sort the list from the most likely species down to the rarest species without regard to taxonomy. And notice there that Merlin uses the calendar date as a filter. Time of year is important. We know that many birds migrate, right? They move around over the course of the year. Some migrate across vast distances, some travel just from one region to another, some use different habitats in different seasons, and some move between elevations between seasons. So a given

location can have very different mixtures of species in the spring compared to the winter, for example. Doing some research at home with your books and whatnot can give you a feel for which species to expect in each season. Now regarding location, we're talking about the region, but then it's important to narrow down our focus to a smaller spatial scale, down to the habitat level. Most bird species are strongly associated with a particular habitat type. For example, the red-winged blackbird lives in wetlands across North America, places like marshes, swamps, and wet meadows, where you find red-wing blackbirds nesting among cat-tails. And then as another example, there's the yellow warbler, which prefers

thickets, shrubby wetlands, riparian woodlands, and edges of forests. It's particularly fond of areas with willows, alders, or other dense vegetation near water. Over in Europe and Asia, the blue rock thrush breeds and winters in a wide range of rocky, cliffside, and human-made habitats, from sea cliffs and mountain gorges to ruins, quarries, and urban buildings, typically favoring areas with vertical faces and sparse to moderate vegetation. I could go on and on with many, many examples, but you get the idea. Now, just like you won't find me hanging out in a corporate office with fluorescent lighting and cubicles, you probably won't find a red-winged blackbird in alpine tundra,

or a blue rock thrush in a tropical grassland. This brings us to another area of study for you in your vast amounts of spare time at home. You want to, A, learn how to recognize the common habitat types in your region, and B, learn which birds are strongly associated with each of those habitats. To learn your local habitats, see if there are any books about your region's natural history. These are often wonderful resources. There might also be some websites with useful info. For example, you can try using Wikipedia to look up the ecoregions in your area and the habitats found within each of those ecoregions.

There's a book, I think I've mentioned before, that is just fantastic for this. It's called Habitats of the World, and it's published by Princeton University Press. Birders are one of the target audiences for the book. So not only does it describe the vegetation and the physical characteristics of the habitat, it also gives you an idea of some of the birds found there. there. And if you live in North America, there's a very similar book by the same publisher and a couple of the same authors called Habitats of North America. It too is awesome. A great way to research which bird species you can expect in each habitat is to spend time poking around on eBird

and I Naturalist. You can use their websites or mobile apps to zoom in to a specific location to see what species have been reported there. As long as you know what habitat is dominant at that location, you can build your understanding of which birds prefer that habitat. For example, I can use I Naturalist to zoom into a part of Louisiana I know is dominated by a habitat called Bald Cypress Swamp. I filter the data to look at only the bird species that have been reported there. The resulting list has species like Anhinga, Prothonatory Warbler, Little Blue Heron, Limpkin, White Ibus, and so on. Okay, so step two is to take into consideration your region, the habitat, and the time of year. Got it? Good. Let's move on.

Step three is to observe the bird's behavior. What's that little bugger doing? Is it soaring high in the sky, diving in a pond, kicking around dead leaves on the ground, clambering up a vertical tree trunk, building a nest out of mud, sorting its recyclable waste into plastic, glass, and cardboard? As I mentioned earlier, the way a bird behaves can sometimes point you to which family it belongs in. So hopefully you've already been on a lookout for any interesting behaviors. At this step, Step three, however, we're getting more specific, literally. We're looking for behaviors that will get us closer to identifying the actual species of the bird.

Behavior can provide essential data when it comes to species ID. For example, let's say that in step one, you figured out that your mystery bird is a songbird and is most likely a virio, a member of the family virionity. Cool, that narrows it down to 61 species. Then, in step two, you took into account that you're in southeast Arizona and it's June. Looking at your field guide and bird apps, you determine that there are three or four virio species that are most likely where you are and at that time of year. You keep watching the bird as it forages in dense bushes.

You notice that it keeps bobbing its tail up and down. And bingo, that behavior might be the key piece of information you need to conclude that your bird is a bell's virio. The other possibilities, plumbius virio and Hutton's Virio, don't show that tail-bobbing behavior. Behavior also includes the way a bird uses its habitat or micro-habitat. Sure, you've already figured out that the overall habitat is, let's say, a rocky shore. But how is your bird making use of that habitat? Is it swimming in the water? Is it climbing around on rocks, pecking at marine invertebrates, riding the wind high above you? Or if you're in a patch of old growth coniferous forest, is the bird flitting around up in the canopy,

is it running around on the forest floor, is it singing from small trees in the understory, and so on. And speaking of singing, look, I know that learning bird songs and calls is a whole other level of skill when it comes to bird ID. And maybe you're not ready for all that. That's totally fine. But it's still worth taking note of any sounds your bird is making. Because as you consult your bird field guide or app, you might find info about vocalizations, or there might be some recordings that give you the aha moment, where the sound you heard was the last piece of data you needed to clinch the ID.

It's time for step four, general plumage patterns, colors. We're still not getting into the weeds of small details like field marks. Just take note of your overall impression of the bird's color tone and the way its plumage is patterned. Is it mostly black and white, or mostly brown, blue, red, or any other single color? Or does it look as though, through some kind of pagan sorcery, a rainbow was torn from the sky, given life, and molded into the form of a bird? You also want to pay attention to any patterns in the plumage. Is it plain and uniform?

Or is the patterning more complex with spots, speckles, bars, or streaks? As an example, imagine you've gone through the first three steps. So you know you have a bird in the New World Blackbird family, Icturidae. You're in northern Minnesota and it's May. The habitat is agricultural grassland with some patches of conifer and mixed forest nearby. and you've been paying attention to your bird's behavior and sounds. Looking at your field guide, you see that there are about 12 species in the family Icturidae that could be in this location at this time of year.

But at this step, you're considering the overall plumage color and pattern. Among the 12 possible species, several are blackish overall, some are mostly orange or mostly yellow, one is a sort of burnt orange color, and one has bright red patches on it. If your mystery bird is one of the mostly black species, now you have only five or six species to choose from. You can proceed to narrow it down further.

At this step, you can see that we're not looking at little details like eye color or spotting on the breast or white markings on the tail. That comes next. At last, you're allowed to look at all those field marks. Go nuts. Pull out a microscope if you want and count the number of eyelash feathers on your bird. I don't care. And you know, up until this point, you might have been able to go through all the steps without even using binoculars.

Seriously. Because we've been more interested in the overall structure and plumage patterns, things we can often observe without binoculars, unless, of course, the birds like a mile away or something. But now, if the bird sticks around long enough, you can study it in your binoculars or your spotting scope, or you can take some photos. Going back and forth between looking at the bird and your field guide, you can check the field marks against the small number of species you've already narrowed it down to. You'll know what section to look at in your book or app because of the group you placed the bird in during step one. So back to our

hypothetical ichterid in Minnesota, maybe you notice some details like it has jet black underparts and a black face, and it has a pale yellow patch on the nape, or in other words the back of the neck, and a contrasting white back and rump. And with those field marks, you have your answer. It's a male bobbolink, dolokonics or a zivorous. that combo of a black front and pale back is unique to the bobble link no other songbird in North America looks like that and hey look at that we did it we went through all five steps so just to quickly review step one is to figure out which family or other major group

the bird fits into look at the bird's overall shape and size step two is is to consider your location, the habitat, and the time of year. Step three is to notice the bird's behavior and any sounds it makes. Step four is to look at the overall coloration and patterns of the bird's plumage. And step five is to nerd out and look at the finer scale details of the bird's plumage and body parts. Now, in reality, does a birder go through these steps methodically one after the other every time they're trying to ID a bird? Probably not. Reality is more chaotic and far less linear. A lot of this noticing and making decisions is happening in your brain and it's happening

fast. You jump back and forth among the steps, integrating all the data to get closer and closer to making your final conclusion. The more experienced you become at bird ID, the faster you can go through this process, and the less conscious you might be about any one of the steps. And as you get to know the birds of your backyard, neighborhood, or region, you'll begin to develop search images for them. A search image is a kind of mental template for what different bird species look like in different settings. With a finely tuned search image, finally tuned because you've done your homework and put in many hours of birding in the field, with that search image you might be able to confidently identify a bird with just a fleeting glimpse.

This is related to a term you hear birders use, JIS. It's an acronym for general impression, size, and shape, G-I-S. This is a holistic mental model of a bird's appearance in motion. Size, shape, behavior, flight pattern. Jizz is a birder's intuitive grasp of what a bird looks like as a whole. It's often used when birds are far away. backlit or partially obscured. Another note about this whole process is that

it turns out that many bird species have field marks that are so glaring and diagnostic that they're a dead giveaway. Such markings allow us to forget all about steps one through four and jump right to step five. For example, if you're near the ocean in the Gulf states of the U.S. and you see a bird that looks like a turn

and it has a lower beak that's dramatically longer than the upper beak, step five, baby, that there is a black skimmer. Or if you're in Australia, let's say, and you're looking at a plover with big flaps of yellow skin in front of its eyes, that can be only one thing, a masked lapwing. I suppose I should mention there's an unofficial sixth step in the bird ID process. If you're out-birding with other people, this step involves arguing about what the species is. Your birder friend seems to be so off-base with their ID that now you're wondering if they were looking at an entirely different bird.

And this is where you want to stand your ground. Be confident. Trust in yourself. You've done the homework. You've gone through the five steps. You know with 100% certainty that the bird in question is a turquoise tenager. But your friend is over there screaming at you that, No, it's an opal-rumped tanager. But just remember, your friend is crazy and dumb. They are a bad birder and you are a good birder. You must defend your ID of turquoise tanager to your dying breath. Is that all there is to say about the process of bird identification? No, of course not. That's why there are entire books on this topic. But I want to add a few more thoughts here. When you're looking at a bird field guide with illustrations, you're being shown

idealized representations of each species. Hopefully, it shows you the differences between males and females, and sometimes it will show you seasonal differences in plumage, or what an immature bird looks like. We just have to keep in mind that nature is messy and doesn't always conform to our images of the ideal. Besides the variation we see between sexes, among age classes, across seasons, there's also a lot of individual variation out there. So this is just something to keep in mind when you're out there identifying birds. Another thing is that sometimes there are birds that will trip us up as we go through step one and two. Because in rare situations, you'll encounter a rare bird, a species that isn't where you expect it to be. It's a vagrant

or an accidental species. Maybe it's supposed to be over in Asia, but here it is right in front of you on a California beach. Other birds that can throw a wrench in the gears of your ID process are hybrids, as well as birds with abnormal plumage like albino, lukistic, or melanistic individuals. And, you know, there are some species that are so similar to the human eye that it's almost impossible to tell them apart in the field. Or in less extreme situations, there are plenty of species groups that are notoriously hard to work with, species that only expert birders can confidently identify. In North America, one of the classic challenging groups is the Mpidanax flycatchers. They belong to the genus Mpidinax, and there are about 11 species in the U.S. and Canada.

These little buggers are all grayish with light bellies, and they have some degree of a white ring around their eyes. They're pretty hard to ID, but by no means impossible. and if you're able to hear them vocalize, it gets a lot easier to figure out the species. In any case, maybe don't start your birding career on day one by trying to tell apart a willow fly catcher and an alder flycatcher. I'm about to head back to Asia where I'll be doing a lot of birding. Over there, one super challenging group, for me anyway, is the leaf warblers. There are 80 species in the family Philoscopity, then they all belong to one genus Philoscopis.

Many of these leaf warblers look super similar. They're also tiny and they move fast through the foliage, so they're hard to get a look at. But you know what? I embrace the challenge. I'm actually excited to go back and get more experience with this group of lookalike birds. I say, bring on the Philoscopus leaf warblers. Okay. At this point, I need to address the elephant bird in the room.

identifying birds with mobile apps. I just walked you through a process that requires nothing but a field guide and some binoculars. It's the way bird ID has been done for a long, long time. But I did mention apps along the way, and those apps have been game changers for bird ID. As I was blathering on about step two this or diagnostic behavior that, you might have been thinking, Hey, dude, this is dumb. I don't need all these complicated steps.

I don't need no stinking homework. I can just snap a photo of the bird on my phone, upload it to Merlin, and Merlin will tell me what bird species it is. Or I can use Merlin's sound ID. This is true. We're living in a science fiction future where the computer in your pocket can use artificial intelligence to identify a bird in mere seconds

using a single photo or a sound. That is an amazing and wonderful thing. And if all you care about is getting to a species, level ID as fast as possible, Merlin might be all you need. Heck, you might not even need binoculars. I mean, if you really want to get more technical, you can leave the binoculars at home and just bring your fancy camera with a telephoto lens. Snap some photos of a bird, upload those photos wirelessly to your phone using Bluetooth, and bam, Merlin has successfully IDed your species. Cool, but let me offer you this thought. I believe that deeper levels of understanding.

standing, appreciation, and joy come from deliberate study and field experience, from identifying birds the old school way. Taking the shortcut of using AI can be a crutch that will hold you back from gaining a rich level of knowledge. But don't get me wrong, Merlin is awesome, and it can definitely work as a learning tool. I love it. But I don't think it should take the place of a more thoughtful approach. And hey, if you really can't be bothered to learn how to ID birds on your own, you can always hire a birding guide. You know, like me, people pay me to take them to far away places where I can act like a walking, talking bird ID app. You can pay me to be your crutch. Let me hold you back from gaining a rich level of knowledge. Just kidding, of course, because as much

as possible, I try to facilitate the actual learning of my clients. I want to help them become better birders and to deepen their own knowledge. These days, as I was just saying, I get paid to ID birds. I do this for a living. But I can remember back in the day when I was new to birding. I remember being intimidated by the thought of having to learn to ID all those many, many species, even just the ones in my region. But wow, am I glad I was not scared off. All the work it's taken to build my skills has been worth it. And the work itself is also the thing. It's been fun all along the way. Learning to identify bird species is sort of like learning to play a musical instrument. At first, it can feel overwhelming and frustrating with so

many patterns and techniques to grasp. But with practice and patience, your skills grow and what once seemed confusing begins to feel natural, second nature. Just as a musician learns to play songs, a birder learns to recognize more and more families and species. Both are deeply rewarding pursuits that offer lifelong enrichment. Even though I've dedicated my life to the study of birds and to teaching others about them, there are still more levels to unlock for me, more skills to develop, and many more birds to learn about. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. There are certainly other things I could say about bird ID, a lot of things, but this is just one little podcast episode, isn't it?

If you want to go deeper into this topic, though, I'll put links in the show notes to several good books. Now, as you know, this podcast is powered by the wonderful support of my Patreon community. So thank you guys all so, so much for your support. The newest additions to the community, who signed up since the last episode, are Rachel Fleming, Danny, Inga Rivera Bryant, smoked Gouda, Ronald Murs, Nessie, Annika, Saskia Janes, Victoria, and Calliatt Valsaraj. I hope I pronounced all of your names, correctly. In any case, thank you very, very much for becoming part of the community on Patreon. I really appreciate the help. And if you, my friend, are interested in supporting this podcast,

becoming a member of the community, you can check out my Patreon page at patreon.com slash Science of Birds. There's also a support the show link in the show notes on your podcast app. You can also shoot me an email if you have something you'd like to share with me, deep thoughts about the nature of existence, perhaps, or maybe you want to tell me about your own process for identifying birds. Maybe you've developed a 23-step framework that involves a crystal ball and giving every bird a questionnaire to fill out. In any case, my email address is Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com. Again, this is episode 117. You can check out the show notes for this episode on the Science of Birds website, Scienceofbirds.com. And hey, if you want to get yourself some fun t-shirts,

don't forget to check out bird merch. That's my online store where I've got a bunch of bird and birding themed shirts. Just go to birdmerch.com or click the link in the show notes. I'm Ivan Philipson, and true fact about me, I cannot sleep on airplanes. Not for more than about 30 seconds anyway. And that really sucks because I travel a lot for my work as a birding guide. So I go on these long flights and layover after layover, and then I arrive at my destination totally wiped out, totally obliterated.

And yes, I've tried every kind of neck pillow there is. None of it works. So I really envy those of you who can sleep on planes. I hope you realize what a gift you have. It's a superpower. Anyway, thanks for listening, and I hope you're having a totally awesome day. Peace.