Eliminating the Possibilities

[OregonJunco]

I am a novice birder. (but obsessed nonetheless; I have logged 120 life birds since March 24 of this year!)
I want to share a recent process I went through while attempting to identify some little gray birds, because I am curious to know if this is the kind of thinking most birders do.
Please share your thoughts!

In an oak tree in NW Oregon, I saw a large flock of gray birds, about chickadee size. They were darker above, lighter below, with long tails for their size. They had short dark bills, and were very active, flying and jumping around in the tree, almost hanging upside down from leaves, apparently eating insects.

My first thought was "nuthatch". So I looked in the field guide at nuthatches, and found that my birds were too light in color, and did not creep on the tree trunks and limbs.

Maybe they were kinglets. No, the tail was too long.

Vireos? Nope; they had no wing bars and no facial markings.

Could be gnatcatchers, but the range was wrong, the tails were a different shape, and they had no eye ring.

They seem to be bushtits. Everything fits, except that their backs are slightly darker than the field guide. I'm going with the bushtits.

I spent about 45 minutes watching and puzzling, and thoroughly enjoyed it. How did I do??

[Charles Harper]

I think you did fine, and along the right lines of reasoning. Experience merely shortens the reasoning process. Always allow for slight color variations-- there's sunlight, shadow, binoculars, color sensitivity, printer's ink and the book illustrator's palette between your bird and the one in the picture. Keep your eye on the behaviour-- active and upside-down in the tree convinced me.

Good birding,

[Michael Frankis]

My immediate thought was Bushtits too, great little birds. The big pointer is 'a large flock' - Bushtits are very sociable birds, whereas all the others except for nuthatches are much more likely to be found singly or in pairs, or at most a pair still with a fledged family party, and even nuthatches only in small flocks.

My first ever Bushtit (at Redding in CA), I saw just one at first, and was just a little puzzled - until I saw there were about 8 more higher up the same tree. Then I twigged, right away, Bushtit of course, great, another lifer!

Michael

[Edward]

That's one of my favourite aspects of birding, seeing something when you have no idea what it is and looking through the guidebook until you arrive at a conclusion. It reminds me of my trip to Australia when I just sat in the bush near my brother's house and waited for the birds to come, all of them completely unfamiliar and just leafing through the guide, first trying to establish what family the bird was and then trying to nail down the species. Happy days.

[Lewis]

Yes, the fact they were most notably gray more than anything else, their behaviour was similar to chickadees/nuthatches, and they traveled in a group (AND that you are in a geographical area relatively near my own)...all roads lead to bushtits. Such a gang-bird bushtits are.

As Edward said, the process of moving from no idea all the way to a conclusion is thrilling. I think the fact one must work in this way to become familiar with the natural world around us, and we feel ourselves actually being able to sort it out, learn what we are seeing, and then learn about habits, relationships to other birds and the environment....in the end it's learning about HOME.