Backyard Birding

When you begin attracting birds to your back yard, you will likely notice a plethora of “little brown birds.” At first, they all seem to look alike until you become more familiar with bird identification and what to look for while watching your birds. The hardest thing to remember is not to reach for your field guide first. Study the bird, take some notes and then reach for your field guide. For some practice, I have here one of our “little brown birds” which only recently discovered our feeders.

I am no expert at identifying birds, but here is roughly what I look for when “sketching” a bird in my mind or in my notebook before looking it up.

Size
Try to compare the size of the birds to others with which you are familiar. This will help if you stumble across species such as the downy and hairy woodpeckers who are easiest to differentiate by size. Difficult to tell here, but this bird is larger than a sparrow, smaller than a cardinal.

Color
Look at the overall color and distinctive markings and patterns. Look specifically at the wings to note any bars, the head for any striping, the breast for spots and streaks and the tail for any distinctive markings. On this bird, the back is brown but lightly streaked with white. The breast is white and streaked with brown. There is a noticeable white stripe above the eye which runs to the back of the head. There is some white on the wings. The eyes and legs are also black.

Beak

Large and conical. Light in color. The beak looks like that of a grosbeak.

Behavior

It is surprising how much you can tell from observing how a bird feeds and what birds it seems to associate with. Many species have distinctive preferences for specific types of food and will feed primarily on the ground or at a particular kind of feeder. This bird was alert, but not overly timid. Remained at the feeder when a group of sparrows flew off. It arrived alone and left alone. It only ate from the hopper feeder which contains black oil sunflower seeds.

For this bird, the beak is the most distinctive feature. Looking through a field guide, I find a few species which look similar but differ on important aspects. The song sparrow looks a little like this bird, but is a bit smaller. The female rose-breasted grosbeak and the female black-headed grosbeak both look very similar to this bird. My first guess would be that this is a female rose-breasted grosbeak for the simple fact that we have several males which come so I know this species is in the area.

According to the field guide, we happen to be right outside the border of the black-headed grosbeak’s range so it would not be unheard of in the area, but it would not be as likely as the rose breasted grosbeak.

Looking more closely at the beak, I notice another clue. The picture I have of the female black-headed grosbeak shows a beak that is dark on top. This bird’s entire beak is the same color.

So I conclude that this is, indeed, a female rose-breasted grosbeak.

bird identification, birding, birdwatching, backyard birding