Identifying Backyard Birds

The difficulties of identifying backyard birds seem insurmountable to many people.

"All I can see," said someone to me, "is a speck, and then a streak of something flying, and it is gone. They all look alike to me."

Identifying some backyard birds are easier because we encounter them at close range, and they are considerate enough to delay long enough to give us a good look.

But other backyard birds are exceedingly shy, and give us only a fleeting glimpse. That may be all that is needed in identifying them, if the bird has any distinguishing peculiarity.

One can in time come to know what family the bird belongs to, if you have any sort of fleeting glance of it.

Size, form and manner of flight tell a great deal- even before we can distinguish color.

The use of their wings by birds in flight varies greatly.

• The chimney swift moves its wings quite rapidly and continuously, with intervals of gliding, and they are shaped long and narrow throughout.
• The swallow's wings are pointed and broader at the base than the swift's, nor do they move quite so fast or so irregularly.
• The meadowlark, with short, rounded wings, flutters and sails alternately.
• The kingbird poises with rapidly quivering, extended wings, as does the kingfisher, but when the latter starts on, it proceeds with rather slower and more decisive flappings.
• Most sparrows and finches have a quick, continuous flight, with rapid wing-beats in succession and short pauses, but some, like the goldfinch, go by jerks, rising and falling in deep undulations, usually calling as they fly, as though each jerk forced air through the larynx.
• The woodpeckers also have a wavy flight, but they are larger, and can be readily distinguished.

• The warblers are slender little birds with a sort of flickering flight.

• The blue jay's long tail attracts notice, and he progresses by a regular series of flappings.

Identifying backyard birds can also be revealed through their positions in standing, and in their paces or other motions.

• Flycatchers and bluebirds stand very erect, as do thrushes and the cedar waxwing. But the flycatcher soon reveals himself by darting out after an insect.

• The thrush stands still for quite a while, — in the woods, unless it be a robin, — while the bluebird will more likely take an apple tree, fence, or wire, and he is smaller than the robin.

• The waxwing has a pronounced crest and usually goes in flocks. The spry movements in the foliage will distinguish a warbler from the sedate vireo.

• The blackbird walks, as do the larks, starlings, pipits, oven-birds, and water thrushes, while the robin, sparrows, and others, usually hop.

• The fox sparrow, the thrasher and the chewink scratch away among the dead leaves, but the variegated chewink can never be mistaken for the other brown bird, nor could the fox sparrow for the big thrasher, even if he had not left for the north before the thrasher arrives.

The birds that climb thereby distinguish themselves from all others.

• One will know that the nuthatch is not a woodpecker when he persists in running down-hill on the tree-trunk.
• The slender brown creeper, climbing in upward spirals, appears different from the robust woodpecker.

It will be of great help to learn the principal groups and families of birds in a general way, and their peculiarities.

When it comes to identifying backyard birds, especially members of the finch or warbler families, note the characteristics of their form, color, and marking, and look it up in a book. Also, our website is a tremendous source of help in identifying backyard birds.