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Revise bird books! (1 Viewer)

wildlifelove

Hopefully Birding...
Hi

Like i used to suffer! is seeing new birds not knowing what they where! well the only answer was REVISE! i read me bird books! every single night! and in spare time so i really no what bird is what!
I still get mistakes but that is the way forward to help you ID new birds!

Also taking a look at the gallery!. Google images! are all good sources to get them birds stuck in your head :t:
 
Absolutely agree. Prior to my first trip to North America I spent at least 3 months prior to the trip trying to learn the main id features of species I was likely to see and it worked. I'm planning to visit Arizona next year and am already studying Western field guides, makes the trip much more satisfying when you can id some/most of the birds yourself. I'll still need help from members on this forum though for some birds.
 
Before visiting somewhere new, I try to get a checklist of the area so I know which ones to review beforehand. To know which fieldmarks to look for if you think you recognise something means less ids "lost" through wasting time recording everything.

I also try to make a playlist of the calls of the birds on the list, or at least those I don't know, and listen to them all a few times.
 
another good (and even more challenging) thing to learn is birdsongs. so u can know what birds are around b4 u see them.
I have a birdsong id book with CD , its great!
 
Hi

Like i used to suffer! is seeing new birds not knowing what they where! well the only answer was REVISE! i read me bird books! every single night! and in spare time so i really no what bird is what!
I still get mistakes but that is the way forward to help you ID new birds!

Also taking a look at the gallery!. Google images! are all good sources to get them birds stuck in your head :t:

Spot on. I did this every night for my first two years birdwatching. In fact, I could do with doing more of this nowadays to swot up on the intricate little plumage details of birds, as I have become such a lazy and complacent birdwatcher. Never stop learning!
 
So true. And you can never stop learning! There's always something more to learn, some new little plumage detail or whatever, which makes it all so interesting. I just sat down by the computer after having perused a book on raptors, first checking to see the differences between a female and a young Merlin, then reading through all the identification marks of Eleonora Falcons in preparation for a trip to Mallorca later this spring... and I often keep the Collins guide close by to look up stuff.

Also, every time I see a new bird, or something I don't see often, I look them up in the guide and make sure I note all the field marks, usually thinking "yes, that's just it, that's what it looked like". I also google more images, check the Opus and Wikipedia articles, trying to learn everything.
The first years birding I was mainly concerned with species, now I've progressed to the level that I try to sex and age all the birds I see. As I said, there's always more to learn!
 
As I've confessed elsewhere, I found it incredibly hard to get a grip with Australian birds prior to my first trip there last December. I kept thumbing through the books, but little seemed to stick - probably a function of increasing age! Yet when i was there and actually saw the blasted things, my learning curve, steep though it was, was successfully negotiated. Moral - keep revising even when it doesn't seem to be sinking in. Oddy, my trip previously to Canada scarcely needed any revision as I'd been to north America before albeit decaded ago.

One great 'game' my mates used to play on tedious bus/train journeys was reading out the descriptions from the field guide (minus certain give away names) to see who'd recognise the bird in question first. It was astonishingly efficient way in which to get to know what exotic birds looked like!
 
I will take the thread title literally, as I also usually find some sort of official checklist and make modifications in the book as species are split/lumped. That way their is a low risk of realizing a potential lifer was missed just because you didn't realize you should try for it or pay attention to it.
 
Believe this is a slight cross-Atlantic miscommunication - Brits (and others) say "revise" to mean "review", but in the US I don't think we have that meaning for the word very often.

I think it (revise) is meant in the same context as preparing for an exam ...ie to study
 
In Britain the word "revise" has both meanings but it's usually clear from the context which one is intended. When I first saw this thread title, however, I got it wrong!
 
Like Pshute -- who I recognize from the Aussie chat line -- I like to prepare checklists to study from before a trip. And like John Cantelo, I found it really difficult to get an advance grip on Australian birds before we went there in 1994. But I found that once we were there, ID was not as difficult as I had feared -- even the gerygones could usually be ID'd if you looked carefully at the head. Can't wait to go back (maybe next year).
 
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