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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Am I being a bore (1 Viewer)

O

OSCAR-C

New member
Im a newbie at spotting and just spent my 1st time in the hides at Pennington Flash,I took my Bird ident book with me but when I spotted something I could not look it up quick enough.
So I kept asking fellow spotters What was that,they were alright at first answering my queries but soon got fed up with me,so I moved on.
Is there a quicker way than books to find what Ive spotted.
I dont wat to bore anyone else.
 
OSCAR-C said:
Im a newbie at spotting and just spent my 1st time in the hides at Pennington Flash,I took my Bird ident book with me but when I spotted something I could not look it up quick enough.
So I kept asking fellow spotters What was that,they were alright at first answering my queries but soon got fed up with me,so I moved on.
Is there a quicker way than books to find what Ive spotted.
I dont wat to bore anyone else.
Click to expand...

Probably a good solution is to find a friend who already knows about birds and go out with them a few times to learn the basics. Asking a few times in a hide is okay, I think nobody will mind this, but agree asking others too often might disrupt their day out.
 
OSCAR-C said:
Im a newbie at spotting and just spent my 1st time in the hides at Pennington Flash,I took my Bird ident book with me but when I spotted something I could not look it up quick enough.
So I kept asking fellow spotters What was that,they were alright at first answering my queries but soon got fed up with me,so I moved on.
Is there a quicker way than books to find what Ive spotted.
I dont wat to bore anyone else.
Click to expand...

Most birdwatchers like to share their knowledge, hence forums like this one. I suppose that you will recognise more bird species the second time that you go to your local site, still more the third time, etc. Familiarising yourself with the pictures of the birds in your identification book before then will help, too, as will on-line videos and the likes, which we never had when I started birdwatching back in the mid 1960s! Enjoy your new hobby.

Allen
 
Hi Oscar

Agree with Jos, if you can find someone to go with on your birding trips. Keep an eye out for any BF Member Meetings there might be that you can get to. There's one at Leighton Moss most years I think.

Another idea for you, as you go to Pennington Flash, is to read the Opus article, click on the link for each bird you're not familiar with and from there check out the Gallery studying all the pictures - you should find examples of males, females and juveniles, also breeding and non-breeding plumages for most species you're likely to see there.

D
 
Maybe try to learn which species are the most common ones where you go, and study them in the field guide beforehand. Get familiar with your guide as well so you won't have to spend ages finding the right page. Some people have these little coloured paper tags to mark for example the pages with ducks, waders, gulls or whatever.

If there's a bird club or something like that close to you maybe they have outings you can join, I know I've learned a lot from more experienced birders this way.

Take your time! Don't stress and feel like you have to identify every bird you see, take a good look at a few instead and try to remember their characteristics. Also don't expect to be able to identify everything, even with the guide... some birds are difficult to ID, even for experts. (Waders and gulls are pretty difficult sometimes...)

Have fun discovering all the birds! :)
 
Why not have pencil and paper and do some bird, duck, wader outlines already on it and for any "unknown" that you are not sure on put some notes onto the correct outline with the distinguishing feather positions marked ,bill/ beak length, leg colour or even colours of certain areas noted, as when all comes these are the distinguishing features which the majority will use [apart from the call] to narrow it down to the "one"
 
To start off, there is nothing like having someone to show you. If you keep asking occasionally you will often find people happy to help. However, when you have spent time working through a field guide trying to sort out a bird for the first time, it really sticks in your mind and you never forget it. Its also a real satisfaction to know that you have sorted something out correctly. I'm sure people in hides will be happy to confirm your identifications if you ask "is that a such and such?" rather than just asking them what it is without having tried to figure it out yourself first.
Most people in hides really are quite glad to help, but there are also plenty of grumpy gits.

Tom
 
I agree with all the advice here . Its frustrating not knowing immediately what bird you are looking at but if you always ask others you will never learn the skills and techniques of recording what you are seeing to look up later.
Half the enjoyment for me is the looking up and research. To have the whole answer handed to me on a plate in a few seconds is not very satisfying really is it ?

I would look out for a simple pictorial guide to British Bird identification initially.
Make sure that it is split up into sections that follow habitat. ie Coasts & Cliffs, Shores and Esturies in Autum & Winter etc . That way you should be able to immediately open the pages that correspond with where you are and your search is just confined to 1 or 2 pages at most.

I can recommend 'Whats that Bird' by Peter Hayman & Michael Everett published by RSPB an excellent starter guide.
good hunting

There are currently 32x used copies on Amazon starting price £0.1penny
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-That-Guide-British-Birds/dp/B0010H735C/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267452769&sr=8-9
 
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Personally I dont mind people asking questions. Its the ones who spend the next half hour explaining why your answer is wrong that gets my goat.

"well I've seen cormorants before and I've never seen one with white on before. Are you sure it's a cormorant......." Grrrr
 
StokeOwl said:
Personally I dont mind people asking questions. Its the ones who spend the next half hour explaining why your answer is wrong that gets my goat.

"well I've seen cormorants before and I've never seen one with white on before. Are you sure it's a cormorant......." Grrrr
Click to expand...

Yes I agree had that the other day " Have you seen the Divers".. " Yes they are over there".. Lines up scope... " Here have a look".." Well they don't look like Divers to me":smoke:
 
Give it some time. It is actually fun to learn it slowly. When you have 200 on your life list you will look back on the early months, years, decades, as the most fun part of birding. Do not stop, in any case.

Not sure what to say about hides. We barely use them here.
 
Another thing, that I seldom see mentioned. Accept that as a beginner you are going to see birds that you can't identify from the view you have. And you are going to be wrong some of the time. It's part of learning. When you've been birding a couple of years you will still be doing it, but by then you'll expect to be doing it. I'm a retired professional field biologist, I've been birding since 1958, at least that's when I started keeping regular notes, and I'm still doing it. Any seasoned birder has misidentified thousands of birds. You do come to develop a sort of sixth sense that tells you "You probably just goofed", say 10 or 12 seconds AFTER you have commited yourself.

Will
 
I used to come home with scribbled notes. All the parts were found in my field guide, but unfortunately not on the same bird. ;)

I came to realize witnesses in court, for crime cases, may have wildly different memories of the scene, and they all think they are right!
 
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Oscar, as a relative noob myself, may I just suggest not trying to look up every bird you see in your guide while looking at the bird. I tried this for a while and it drove me nuts. What works a lot better for me is to make notes after I've seen the bird for as long as it lets me, detailing size, shape, colors, every detail I can suss out, then looking him up in the books when I get home.

I'm also learning that this whole gig has a looooong learning curve.

Luck to ya.
 
longbow said:
I'm also learning that this whole gig has a looooong learning curve.
Click to expand...

It really does seem to!

I agree with all this and have been through it all too, having gotten into birdwatching a couple of years ago I really can relate to the frustration of learning identification and getting it wrong! Not worrying overmuch about identifying everything is good advice, it's just too overwhelming otherwise and not enjoyable at all. Better to gradually ease yourself into things - being a photographer I would take photos of the birds so I could try to look them up later, which wasn't always very successful then but looking back now I can identify more of them.

I found that as I casually browsed through my bird books and photos of birds on here and places like flickr slowly I got better at recognising birds, although I still see a lot of little bird silhouettes that I don't even try to identify - maybe in a few years I'll have better luck with those. It's something you train your brain to do and it takes time.

I remember going into the hides at Cley being completely baffled by all the waders. I am still really bad at those but once you get a foothold with one or two species then you get a little more confidence and can start to say "well, it's not a dunlin, it's not a redshank... it could be a ------". You might be wrong (I have been inumerable times!) but your hit rate slowly will improve

An example: I recently saw a Purple Sandpiper on the coast for the first time. I'd not looked at the books and tried to learn its distinguishing features and if someone asked me what a Purple Sandpiper looked like I'd have been unable to say but I must have looked at photos and had them sink in because when I saw it I had an impression and thought 'that's not a Purple Sandpiper is it?'. When I stopped later to look at the bird pics I have on my phone I realised I was right and was really pleased. I have a vague memory of seeing photos of them on flickr so possibly it sunk in from that.
 
Oscar - lots of good advice for you here. doing some research before you go to a site is definitely a good idea so you know what to look for. Making field notes seems to be a dying art these days, but it is a very important way for you to learn because it forces you to look at a bird in detail. As mentioned earlier, it is good to accept that you can't expect to identify everything as soon as you start birding - concentrate on the things you can get good views of so you can familarise yourself with those "easy" species first.
 
Keep checking in your field guide, take LOTS of notes ( including sketches - it doesn't matter how good they are as long as the "bits" are in roughly the right places ) and keep asking questions. Don't let a few miserable bu**ers put you off, the great majority of birders are more than willing to share their knowledge.
Chris
 
Just getting back into birding after many years

and I think this is the fun time. Getting excited about seeing a smew or a curlew or even the humble Bullfinch. Ive armed myself with not one but 4 field guides, I'll settle on a favourite I'm sure, but for now the cross referencing angle is good for me. Identifying something Ive not seen before really is the joy for me, playing amateur detective, taking into account location, time of day/night and season all give clues as to what that flapping brown thing was. It kinda breaks the ice in a hide when ask if I can tick off Sandwich Tern in my book only to be told, 'Sure, I don't think that Black Headed Gull will mind'
 
Pardon my ignorance/arrogance but....
As someone who has since 'forever' been interested in Birds and Wildlife, I can't see where you 'noobs' have just happened across birding? I remember at age 9 or 10 id'ing a Black-necked Grebe on the Trent. I used my 'coffee table' AA Book of Birds to confirm the id. It was.."what was that? never seen anything like it before"...shall have to look see what it could have been. Then began the treck through the literature available to me to try and come to a conclusion. I even saw my first Cormorant on the Trent too..and had to consult the AA book again. But i found out what the birds were.....
Surely you must have a kinda clue as to what you are witnessing. The field guides nowadays are so much better and the progs on the telly are really good. I had Hans and Lotte Haas, Jaques Cousteau in black and white and Terry Nutkins back then.
Give yourselves a break, look and concentrate on what you are seeing, consult a good field guide and i bet you will know what you have seen.
It's just looking really.

dave...
 
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