BIRD ID

If you have ever been out on a walk or come across a bird that was unknown to you, there are a few tips that can help to narrow down the possibilities.  If you are lucky enough to get a photo of it, so much the better.

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If you did get that photo, there is a cellphone app called Merlin that has the ability to give you some suggestions of what bird it is similar to what is presented below.

If the photo is not available, here are some tips.

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Size of Bird 

There are nine general categories of bird sizes used.  These will help you separate or limit the number of birds that fit into that category.

• Chickadee (< 5 1/2”)

• Sparrow (4 1/2—7 1/2”)

• Starling (7 1/2—8 1/2”)

• Robin (9-11”)

• Blue Jay (11-12 1/2”)

• Crow (17-21”)

• Mallard (20-28”)

• Pheasant (12-48”)

• Swan (53-72”)

 

As you can see there are some overlaps in the sizes of the birds.  These are only guidelines to eliminate or rule out certain families of birds.

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Legs and Feet 

Each bird will generally have two legs, two feet and four toes.  Sometimes there will be three toes forward and one back or two forward and two back.

• short (perching birds, shorebirds)

• medium (willet)

• long (shorebirds, herons)

• webbed (ducks, coots)

• talons (hawks, owls, falcons)

 

Shape of Bill or Beak 

These will be specialized in what the bill or beak is used for and what food the bird will be using for energy.

• thin and delicate (warblers)

• stout (sparrows, seedeaters)

• short and hooked (raptors)

• long and straight (sandpipers)

• long and down-curved (curlew)

• long and up-curved (avocet)

• flattened (duck)

• long and dagger-shaped (heron)

 

Habitat 

This identification feature will help in identifying what type of bird.  There are many more types of habitats but this will give you a basic idea of where the bird was found.

• Marsh (ducks, sandpipers, coots, herons, red-winged blackbirds)

• Grassland (sparrows, meadowlarks, short-eared owls)

• Shrubs (Townsend solitaire, catbirds, thrashers)

• Deciduous woodland (magpies, kestrels, warblers)

• Boreal forest (warblers, red-headed woodpecker, great gray owls)

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Within this province, one can separate species into a number of habitat types – open grassland, shrubs or edge, parkland, riparian or wetland and boreal forest.  Each has its specific set of limits for birds, mostly related to supply of food, type of food, sources of water and shelter or nest cover.  These however are not exclusive as many species will have ranges larger than one specific habitat type or ecoregions.

 

Within each of these, there are sub habitats or niches within each habitat that have specific matches with the species in question.  The diversity of the species are generally related to the diversity of the habitat.

 

At a grander scale, the province has been divided into ecozones, ecoregions and sub-ecoregions.

 

Major Field Marks 

These will be the most striking of the actual features of the bird.  These will be the ones that jump out at you when you see the bird.  They also may be the features that don’t jump out like the ability to camouflage into the habitat.  They can relate to the silhouette of the bird.

• colour of body (blackbird, bluebird)

• tail (ruddy duck, house wren)

• patches of colour (meadowlark, red-winged blackbird, killdeer)

 

Wings and Flight

If you are not able to see the bird when it is perched or stationary, the shape of the wings or silhouette might give you some indication of what bird it is.  Many of the hawks and eagles are seen soaring high in the sky and cannot be easily seen.

• round end (cooper’s hawk, northern harrier)

• long and pointed (kestrel)

• broad (red-tailed hawk, Swainson’s hawk)

• Short (owls)

• undulating flight (woodpecker, flicker)

• gliding (hawks, partridge)

• direct line

• flapping (crow) 

• hovering (hummingbird, western kingbird)

• acrobatic tricks (swallow)

 

Behavior 

These features are likely to be unique to a specific bird or group of birds.  Some birds will jump around on the ground and other won’t.  This is where the feet and the behavior pair up to help you identify that bird.

• climbs down tree trunk (red-throated nuthatch)

• tail cocked up (house wren, ruddy duck) 

• hops on ground (sparrows)

• acrobatic flights (Sprague’s pipit)

• floats low in the water (grebes, cormorant, loon)

 

Minor Field Marks 

These are the other finer markings on the bird that will help to identify a bird.  Birds in the fall are out of breeding plumage and will be very pale in colour and these minor field marks will help.

• eye rings (Nashville warbler)

• bars on wings (common nighthawk)

• small patches of colour (warblers)

• patterns of colour (waxwings, sparrows)

 

Call 

If you are able to hear a bird, try to identify or create a phrase that mimics the bird call.  Songs are generally split into primary songs, secondary songs and mechanical sounds.  

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Song 

Primary songs are split into advertising songs, signal songs and emotional songs.  Advertising songs are characteristically loud, produced at the beginning of mating season and serves to attract a mate, intimidate a competing member of the same sex and species, or both.  Signal songs serve to coordinate activity between individuals, especially mated pairs.  Emotional songs seem to serve no apparent purpose, but results from the uninhibited expression of a bird’s feeling as a given moment.

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Secondary songs are split into whispering songs, sub-songs, rehearsed songs and female songs.  Whispering songs is a simple, quiet version of the primary song.  Sub-song are typically half-hearted, quiet variations of the primary song.  Rehearsed songs are random and undefined and typically uttered by young who have not yet developed the ability to sing properly.  Female songs are considered secondary since females typically sing infrequently and when they do, the songs are usually subdued and non-territorial.  

 

A bird’s song doesn’t necessarily come from the mouth.  The male Ruffed Grouse announces its virility by drumming its wings.  Owls produce a “clack” with their beak.  The American Bittern produces a hollow plopping sound by “pumping” its neck up and down, thereby compressing and vibrating the esophagus.  

 

Try to identify if the frequency is going up or down, repeating or one single, long phrase.

• twitter or pattern (meadowlark)

• series of calls (catbird)

• phrases of call (chickadee)

• frequency of call

 

Territory and Nesting 

A bird will protect and identify its food supply, its genetic success and its living quarters by establishing and defending its territory.  Territories are established to ensure the viability of the individual or the pair.  The level of defense will depend on what is being protected.

 

Mating and nesting territory is the most common type of territory.  This is centred by either the male or the nest.  Mating territories by themselves may be distinct like leks of sharp-tailed grouse.  These arenas or tournament grounds are used for the courtship dances of the males.

 

Feeding areas generally are limited by either the capability of the parents to find food and get it back to the nest or in non-breeding season what level the prey species is at the time.  Great-horned owls have a 100-kilometre diameter feeding area within any one year.  The individuals will move within that circle depending on the amount of food available in any one area.

 

Winter territories are those parts of the bird’s habitat where they will move within in winter, particularly by permanent residents.  A specific roosting territory may be defended because of its positive features.

 

Food 

As a result of their lack of teeth, most birds feed rather differently from mammals.  The food is not chewed at all but transferred to the gizzard where it is ground up.  Many birds eat their prey whole.  The majority of birds take prey or food that are usually of sufficiently small size for them to be easily swallowed.  Others like gulls or raptors do tear up larger prey with their beaks.  Yet others, like ducks, may only eat foliage.

 

Feeding is a dangerous occupation since the bird must concentrate upon it and therefore run the risk of not noticing the approach of a predator until it is too late.  In some cases the use of a crop may be advantageous since it enables the bird to feed in an exposed site for a very short period of time and then to retire to a safer place where it can digest the food that it has collected.  As a measure of protection, some birds will feed in large groups so as to maximize survival of many with only a few being prey for the predator.  Others act as sentinel birds for others (crows, blackbirds, magpies) notifying others of a predator in the vicinity.

 

Birds like many animals have developed their specific food niches so as to not be competing for the same food in the same space at the same time.

 

Seed eaters – these birds have developed short, stouter bills to crack seeds. Many birds eat seeds but the par excellence of seed eaters are the families Emberizidae, and Fringillidae.  Relatively few of the seed eating birds can eat seeds the whole year round.  Many will be insectivorous in the summer and seed eaters in the fall and winter.  Seed eating birds face other problems in relation to their diet – they need powerful gizzards with a good supply of grit to break up the seed.

 

Fruit eaters – seed eating birds remove the offspring from a plant.  In order to maximize distribution of the seeds, the plant has evolved the fruit as a ‘reward’.  However, in order to have as many fruits as possible, the plant grows fruits that are only just nutritious enough to attract birds.  Hence fruit eating birds eat a diet that is often poor in nutrients and they may have to spend long periods of the day feeding in order to get sufficient food.  Fruit is often relatively large in size and, as a result, many of the fruit eating birds have wide bills and gapes, enabling them to swallow the fruit whole.  Once swallowed, the soft fruit is relatively rapidly broken down and digested.

 

Insect eaters – a wide variety of birds eat insects.  One reason for this is that many turn to other diets at other times of the year.  The true specialized insectivores that take insects the whole year may be broadly divided into two types – those with stubby bills and huge gapes and those that have long pointed bills.  At times of abundance, many birds that do not regularly make use of insect food will join the hunt.

 

Fish eaters – species of four orders of birds (divers, grebes, pelicans and herons) feed predominantly on fish, though not all the individual species do so.  In addition, a number of ducks, birds of prey, most gulls and terns, skimmers and kingfishers feed largely on fish, as do a few species of owls.  Currently no passerines do this.  Fish are extremely slippery and birds need to have evolved several adaptations which reduce the chances of their escaping.  Some, like cormorants, have a sharp hook on the end of the upper mandible which grabs the prey.  Herons use the upper mandible to spear the prey, giving them two chances to catch their prey.  The owls, osprey and eagles have particularly long talons which sink into their prey to prevent slipping.

Birds of Prey – two orders of birds, Falconiformes and the Strigiformes, are usually classified as birds of prey.  There are similarities in the shapes of their bills and talons, both of which perform the same function in the two groups, namely those of grasping their prey and of tearing it up to eat it.  The largest of these are the eagles and vultures.

 

Omnivores – a great number of birds take more than one type of food usually showing seasonal variation while others will not ignore a temporary abundance of any food that they can eat.  Species in this category include starlings, gulls, and scavengers like kites.

 

Specialized eaters – most birds are specialized to some degree in the types of food they take or in the way they take it.  However, there are species that have particularly specialized ways of feeding.  Hummingbirds are highly specialized for the feeding on nectar.

 

Plumage and Molting 

Most birds will go through a series of changes in plumage, some based on age and some based on season.  The natal or nestling plumage is usually called down.  This fluffy plumage is usually lost as the downy feathers are replaced with new feathers.  Only a few birds, woodpeckers, kingfishers and a few passerines, have naked baby birds.  Most birds replace their down in a manner that supports survival.  Usually the wing and tail feathers arrive first and then the rest of the body is slowly replaced.

 

Some birds will go through a juvenal phase where there will be adult feathers but the coloration will not necessarily be the same as the mature adult.  Young bald eagles will not have the characteristic white head and tail for a number of years.  This makes it increasingly difficult to determine the species in the family of gulls, for instance, where they may go through four years of different molts.

 

Once the bird has reached sexual maturity, many species of birds change colours in the spring to increase breeding capability and to advertise to prospective mates that they are in fact the male of their species.

 

One last type of plumage difference comes in a number of hawks.  Here you can get different morphs, either dark or rufous.  These will change what is typically a light-coloured bird to one that is almost black.  It may also mask some of the other major or minor field marks used to describe the bird.

 

WHAT YOU MIGHT NEED TO IDENTIFY A BIRD

1. Eyes – some are very easy and some are not stationary or will hide

2. Ears – some hide in the brush or shrubbery

3. Patience or Time – you may need to be still and allow the bird to come to you

4. Field Guides – there are many guides either printed or electronic

5. Binoculars or Spotting Scope – this will allow you to see if you cannot get close

6. Clothing/Protection – in marshes, you may encounter water and biting insects

7. Attracting Aids – bird feeders can attract birds

8. Record Keeping – writing down features of bird will help in identifying later

9. Future Actions or Activities – the more times you go out, the easier it will be