How I Became So 'Smart'

I have friends who believe I was born with the knowledge of being able to determine one bird from another. They are amazed when I hear a cardinal singing or a chickadee making its gurgling call and know what it is.

I tell my friends I was not born with this knowledge. It has come from many, many years of listening, looking for the bird that makes the sound and then studying my various books and recordings.

My eyes on the world. (Margo D. Beller)

In short, I get out there. They do not.

When I first started seeing birds at my first feeder I consulted one of my husband's (MH) books published by Readers Digest. It listed "North American Wildlife" including birds as well as trees, flowering plants and just about everything I could see in my immediate area in simple language and with pictures of flowers, leaves and seeds.

I called this book "The Idiot's Guide" because that is what I was at the time. It has gone through many editions since the one I used because birding and getting out into nature has become very big, especially since the coronavirus pandemic.

My second book was one I found at the old New Jersey Audubon bookstore at Scherman Hoffman, "Birds At Your Feeder." This has been very helpful in identifying birds, what foods they prefer and what predators they face. This has also gone through many editions.

Over time my library has expanded, enough to fill a small bookcase. Along with bird identification books MH has bought guides on mammals, fish, birding behavior and other related subjects. In time I discovered the "Birds of" series by Stan Tekeila and bought the ones for New Jersey and New York. These books listed the birds by color. So if I saw a yellow bird I could look at the yellow-tabbed pages and see if it was a goldfinch or an evening grosbeak. I'm sure there is a guide for every state.

Then I found a used copy of the "Stokes Field Guide to Birds" for the east. Like the Tekeila it had photographs of the birds as well as information on whether a particular warbler liked to stay high in the tree or lower. It had range maps. It was a soft paperback I could carry. (I later bought a used copy of the western bird edition and read it on the plane while I headed to California for a family occasion.)

Then came David Sibley's guide, and that showed me illustrations of birds in flight, birds in breeding plumage, young birds and birds in nonbreeding plumage. Sibley's guide covers the entire U.S. and I started lugging that book with me everywhere I went, wearing out the binding. This has not only gone through more editions but you can now also buy separate west or east bird guides - just like Peterson. (All these publishers of bird guides seem to copy one another. For instance, after Sibley came out a Peterson guide came out covering the continent.)

My go-to guides over the years
(Margo D. Beller)

Finally, if I see something and can't find it in Sibley I turn to Richard Crossley's guide to eastern birds, in which he took pictures of birds in various plumages and grouped them within a picture of suitable habitat. This volume, a paperback like the Sibley, is much larger and so is left at home to consult after I return. If I see something in dim light, I look at the pictures here and hope for the best.

Sibley, Tekeila, Stokes and Crossley have made a lot of money with their guides and other books and products (recordings, for instance). So has the man who revolutionized bird study. No longer did someone have to shoot a bird to study the field marks. Roger Tory Peterson came up with a way to illustrate identifying bird fieldmarks using binoculars, and put that information into a small book that can be easily carried out in the field.

It was the third edition, done in 1947, that is considered the "classic" Peterson guide to eastern birds. There are now many more editions of that guide plus guides to western birds, British birds, insects, etc.

MH gave me his beat-up copy of the 1947 edition, which I consult on occasion. But because MH is a compulsive book buyer and wanted me to have enough information for me to be as smart as two people, he found for me a facsimile edition of Peterson's first guide and a special 50th anniversary edition of the 1947 version done up in gilt-edged pages and black and gold cover. 

1947 Peterson (Margo D. Beller)

None of these volumes leave the house.

By studying these and other books I got to know what to look for when I see and hear birds. Like anything else, if you are interested in something and want to learn about it you gain knowledge. There is nothing magic about it. 

Although there is the one friend who went birding with me and now believes I can see things others don't, which may be true. I am so attuned to hearing little sounds and seeing movement in trees and shrubs that I find the birds. I can see partial field marks and be confident in my identification thanks to many decades of doing this.

I amaze myself some days. But I'm no expert.

I'm No Expert

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

 -- U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Among my friends I am the bird expert. Some even refer to me as the "Bird Lady" (including my husband). When they see a bird they don't recognize they call or send me an email about it. My response is usually the same. If they don't tell me what color or size the bird is I ask about it. Then I get more specific. Where were you when you saw it? What was the bird doing? Was it on the ground or in a tree or flying? Did it make a sound? What did it sound like? Was it bigger than a robin or smaller?

Downy woodpecker, smaller than a hairy, with
dainty bill. (Margo D. Beller)

From the answers I get I run through my head whether I've seen or heard anything similar. If I recognize it from my many, many years of bird watching, I respond with the answer. If not, I start looking in my various field guides, including those by David Allen Sibley (birds of the entire U.S., with his excellent drawings), Richard Crossley (birds of the eastern U.S., with his pictures where he has juxtaposed dozens of shots on a background of habitat) or, if I'm really stumped, Roger Tory Peterson's guide to eastern birds (the 1947 edition; there are many newer editions, but the 1947 is considered by birders to be the best of them). There are others I can consult but these three are the ones I use first.

Then I provide the answer to my friends and continue my reputation as the resident bird expert.

But, truth be told, there is a great deal I still don't know or understand. I know just enough about bird anatomy to get by. MH and I go out in the field and every so often I see a bird I don't recognize, or hear an unfamiliar call. I quickly note the field markings in my notebook, or create a kind of schematic diagram of the call. Then, once home, I pull out the field guides and/or start listening to the CDs of bird songs. And yet, there are times I still can't identify the bird.

I still don't know what this bird is, tho' it may be an immature starling.
I saw it at a grassland park in NJ. (Margo D. Beller)

I do know why birds migrate (to find food and/or a mate and form a nest to create young), although I don't know why certain birds, when finished breeding in the arctic tundra, fly farther south for the winter than others (including the red knot and the blackpoll warbler). Or why the white-throated sparrow only flies as far south as my yard for the winter.

I have much improved my identification skills over the years, but it took me a decade to see a bird on my house feeder and know whether it is a male house finch (red head, weak chin, a common feeder bird) or a male purple finch (raspberry-colored head, slightly larger, purple "eyebrow," an uncommon feeder bird). It helps if a female is nearby because the brownish female purple finch has a bold white eyebrow. The female house finch doesn't.

Female purple finch with her distinctive
eyebrow. (Margo D. Beller)

It also took a very long time - longer than one would think for an "expert" - to know the difference between a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker. The hairy is obviously larger but if one is making its way up a tree that isn't immediately apparent.

You could look at the white outer tail feathers and see if there are spots (downy) or not (hairy), which to me are not that easy to see, even with binoculars. Their calls are similar, tho the hairy's call seems to me slightly higher in pitch and a bit more throaty. (That took a while to learn, too.) A downy would fly to the suet feeder and its bill would seem longer and I'd wonder if it was a hairy. But then a hairy would come to the suet and I'd know it by its size and a bill as long as its head. Eventually that bill, and the bird's size against the feeder, helped me learn the difference.

Still, there are some things that are beyond me.

For instance, how do the birds determine who goes first at the feeder? I understand why something small like a titmouse would take off if a much larger (and ferocious) jay swooped in, but why would one titmice fly to the top of the feeder and wait for another to take a seed before hopping down and taking its own? 

Male junco, one of Deborah Whittaker's
favorite subjects. (Margo D. Beller)

That leads to another question: How do birds tell each other apart? How does the titmouse at the feeder know when another titmouse approaching the feeder is not from its family group and thus chases it away? More important, how does one titmouse know another titmouse is of the opposite sex? There is nothing to tell a male titmouse from a female titmouse, from my perspective (the same is true of other birds including their cousin the blackcapped chickadees and the house wrens that visit the nest box every year). They are the same color, the same shape, the same size. And yet they must know or else we wouldn't have titmice every year.

I recently read a book, "The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent" (by Deborah J. Whittaker) that provided some answers. From her experiments (particularly with the common winter visitor to my yard, the junco) she learned birds give off chemical signals that influence choices on mates, where to build a nest, when to fight and when to fly off. Her research found those chemicals are produced by bacteria that manufacture scents in the oil that birds stroke on their feathers when preening, or cleaning dirt out of their feathers. 

Titmouse. I have no idea if this is a male
or a female. (Margo D. Beller)

Whittaker spent years doing experiments to find this out. This was not something she could learn by sitting on her back porch watching the feeder birds, wondering about all sorts of things as I do.

Still, I am considered the "expert," even after I tell my friends they can find their answers themselves by searching on the internet or in a field guide (we frequently give pocket-sized guides as gifts). It is easier to just ask me.

I don't know if I should consider that a sign of respect or laziness. At least we still keep in touch.