Field Guides

Like I said, I'm not a birder.  I know I'm looking at a bird, and I can probably say whether it's a goose or a duck, a hawk or a crow, but that's about the extent.  I've looked up a few, and now can say what certain kinds of duck are, and that the big hawks along the freeway are probably Red-tailed hawks.

For most everything else, I rely on guides and the internet.  My favorite is the iBird Explorer app for iPhone.  You can buy regional guides, or a "Pro" version, but I went for the "Plus" version.  It's got all the birds in the U.S. downloaded to your iPhone or iPod touch (so no internet connection is required to use it.) Since we travel to Colorado, Kansas and Missouri pretty regularly, I thought it would be good to get an all-encompassing version rather than a regional guide.  I love it.  My favorite thing is the sound feature.  It contains drawings of the bird (sometimes not very helpful), pictures (very helpful) and usually the sounds the birds make.  That's the key.  When you can tell there is a little bird way up in a tree, and you can tell it's pecking at the tree, you know you are probably looking at a woodpecker.  But what kind?  As long as you can hear it, you can compare the sounds the bird is making to the sounds on iBird, and make a pretty solid identification.  And again, it's something fun for my 4-year-old daughter.

I also use three books pretty regularly: "Birds of California Field Guide" by Stan Tekiela (birds are organized by color); "Introduction to BIRDS of the Southern California Coast" by John Easton Lentz (very detailed and descriptive); and National Geographic's "Field Guide to the Birds of Western North America," by Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer (good pictures and easy to use).

Are these the best guides for a budding birder?  I have no idea.  But I like them.

And of course, the other invaluable tool is Google. Field guides tend not to list domestic or exotic birds. But if I'm going to the duck pond, those are the birds I'm seeing and I'd like to know what they are.  So I snap a picture, type a description into Google, and compare my picture to the ones that pop up.