There are lots of things to look at from the window of my third-floor apartment in Portland, Maine. There’s a nice view of 19th-century row houses and brick sidewalks. There’s Casco Bay, in the distance, with a string of rocky islands and the ferries shuttling between them. There are the idled container ships at the port’s terminals, waiting for commerce to begin again. And there are three different kinds of gulls.
The most common gull—the one you’ll recognize—is the gray-and-white herring gull. But there are two others as well, and using an electronic bird identification guide, it’s pretty easy to figure out what species they are. Their names give them away: the great black-backed gull is large and dark; the ring-billed gull’s beak is encircled by a telltale hoop.
The gulls were the first birds I added to my window list when quarantine began in March 2020. In my first two months birding, I counted another 10 distinct species.
You might be able to see even more, all without leaving the comfort of your home. Depending on your location, your window or yard list could reach 200 or more individual bird species. We’ll go into more details below, but the best place to start is by assembling birding basics. Those include:
I’ve been looking at birds all my life. My father was an obsessed birder who saw more than 7,000 of the world’s 9,500 known species, an accomplishment that only 20 or so other birders have ever achieved. But having a dad with world-class talent at an obscure hobby didn’t make me love birds. Despite numerous birthday gifts of binoculars, bird books, and other accessories, I didn’t embrace the activity until I was an adult. I was living in California then, and I progressed from struggling to identify hummingbirds buzzing outside my Los Angeles window to going on an extended quest to find a final bird that my father had repeatedly missed. (I made a deathbed promise that I’d see it; it took half a decade, but I succeeded.)
Birding is one of those activities that people either get or they don’t. The activity seems beyond geeky to some, but once you start looking at it as a sport, or a game, it becomes deeply fascinating. Bird identification has all the elements of a thing that could become an obsession: It is systematic; it is simple but provides endless challenges; it lends itself to lists and counting; and it is unpredictable (because birds don’t stay still, and sometimes don’t conform to what you might expect to be seeing).
“When you embrace birding, the world opens up to you,” says Nick Lund, whose blog, The Birdist’s Rules of Birding, explores the strange joys of the hobby’s subculture. (Birding is practiced by more than 45 million people and generates $41 billion annually, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.)
There are over 900 known bird species in the United States, and nearly everyone has the ability to see a substantial percentage of them right at home. The challenge is actually identifying those birds. The process can be broken into three steps.
1. Observing the bird
You can look at birds with the naked eye. Many will come close enough for you to see details, especially if you’ve got a feeder, especially around dawn and dusk. But ultimately you’ll want a pair of binoculars to observe birds.
The optical quality of inexpensive binoculars has improved so much that you can buy an excellent pair—one that will likely last a lifetime—for well under $300. I’m a huge fan of our pick, the Athlon Optics Midas ED (8×42), and our guide offers several options at different prices and performance levels.
Observing doesn’t just mean seeing a bird. You’ll need to view things in detail. (Try spotting the bird with your naked eye, then raising your binoculars into your field of vision.) But observing also means noting a bird’s particular markings and behaviors. The key to identifying a bird is honing in on its special attributes, like the orange breast of a Baltimore oriole or the sharp crest and angular bill of a pileated woodpecker. Secondary attributes include what the bird is doing. Is it perched on a fence or wire? Soaring above? Pecking at the ground? All of these elements will bring you to step two.
2. Identifying the bird
Until very recently, the easiest way to identify a bird, once you’d gotten a good look, was to carry a printed field guide. Field guides are designed not to vastly broaden your knowledge of nature but to quickly identify what you’re seeing. A field guide will help you narrow down your choices by dividing birds into regional, seasonal, and behavioral categories, all cross-referenced.
I like a printed field guide. My favorite is Kenn Kaufman’s Field Guide to Birds of America, because it gets you to identification very rapidly. But there are other options, including David Sibley’s excellent manuals, which break down into Eastern and Western editions. Here’s a hint for using field guides: Even though they’re meant for quickly identifying a bird, study them a bit. Leave one in your bathroom. Knowing your regional target birds will help you at the window, or in the woods.
Another option: lightweight, fold-out cards, usually printed on laminated plastic, that list a region’s 20 or 30 most common species. These are great for leaving by your window, and there’s one available for just about every state. The fold-outs come from multiple publishers—this one has offerings for many regions and bird types—so you’ll have to check online or at a local nature center to find one that is best for your area.
Of course, bird identification has also gone online, and the hobby lends itself exceptionally well to app-based guides. By using geolocation and crowdsourced data, these apps provide an up-to-date database of the birds that are actually common in your area. You answer a set of questions about your target bird—size, markings, shape, behavior—and the app generates a list of possibilities. The Merlin Bird ID app is published by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, and though there are other birding apps, Merlin is free, comprehensive, and efficient, offering identification, along with photo uploads for machine/AI IDs. And there’s a database of recorded bird songs, which can be used to draw a bird out by creating a territorial challenge (some local regulations prohibit this, so check if you’re birding in a public park or recreation area).
Another resource is your local Audubon chapter. This bird conservation group has regional chapters across the US, and many of them offer regional checklists, seminars, and guided walks (study up at your window, then get out on foot when isolation is lifted).
Observing and then identifying birds can be fascinating for kids. One of the things I try to do with my boys is draw the birds we’re seeing. A simple colored pencil sketch is a great way to remember what you’ve looked at and focus on the particular markings that make a bird unique. Here are some hints from an Audubon chapter on getting kids interested in birding, and here’s an Audubon piece on out-the-window, urban birding.
3. Documenting the bird
The final component of birding is keeping a list. Drawings are a fun way to start, but a simple paper and pen will do—you’ll want to record the time and place of a sighting in a dedicated notepad.
If you want to join a global community of listers, Cornell’s eBird contains built-in checklist tools (like Merlin, the service is totally free). You’ll also be contributing to a global database of bird sightings, which can help in bird conservation.
A window or yard list can be a lifetime pursuit. The first months of your birding endeavor will be filled with new sightings, but that burst of activity slows into something more patient, more zen; rarer birds become your targets, and you find yourself thinking in terms of years or even decades. My dad spotted his final local bird—number 200 on his yard list—five years after seeing his penultimate species.
