It was fortuitous that the featured speaker at this year's Winter Bird Festival was Alvaro Jamarillo, speaking on how the brain recognizes birds. I was busy leading field trips and bumping up against this article's deadline…in fact, wondering what I was going to write about . . . and Alvaro graciously allowed me to "borrow" whatever I needed.
When I, and no doubt all the field trip leaders, call out the name of a distant or poorly seen bird, the question always arises "how do you know it's that bird?" Without fail, we regurgitate the laundry list of size and shape, markings on the head, color in the undertail coverts, length of tail, primary feather projection, and any other field mark we can come up with to explain our call.
To let you all in on a little secret, most of the field trip leaders do not necessarily notice any of those field marks. In reality, what I wish I could say is . . . "Well, after 40 years of birding, I just know what it is." Of course, that won't help any of the novice birders learn to recognize anything.
To experienced birders, a tiny flash of color or a few white spots on the edge of a poorly seen wing through thick foliage, or any number of subtle clues is all that is necessary to identify many birds. There are neural pathways that help us do that, specifically "grandmother cells" to help us recognize faces, and the fusiform face recognition zone. The FFA is "located in the ventral surface of the temporal lobe on the lateral side of the fusiform gyrus, and lateral to the parahippocampal place area, usually being larger in the right hemisphere," and is part of the human visual system specialized in facial recognition.
Alvaro eloquently explained all that with humor and clever optical illusions, and gave more time than I am going to give here, but the take-away message is to concentrate on the faces of birds, because we come with the facial recognition software already hard wired into our central processing units.
Mountain Chickadee
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Chestnut-backed Chickadee
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The two chickadees pictured here are an example he used. Does not the Mountain Chickadee clearly have more "attitude" than the Chestnut-backed? Concentrate on bird faces, and use that in your birding to help you remember ID features.
Alvaro touched on some secrets to help you to identify birds at a glance.
Bird constantly. Repetition is key, and Alvaro figures that 10,000 hours ought to do it. That's only three hours a day for ten years. In my case, and I guarantee that all my birding friends agree, we are never not birding. Walking down the driveway for the morning paper, driving to the store, walking the dog, gazing out the window at work . . . whatever you're doing, look at birds.
Do not ignore common birds. This is extremely important, not just for beginners, but for every birder. Look at every sparrow at your backyard feeder for those differences in plumage due to age, or molt, or feather wear. Don't ignore any bird just because you happen to have seen it before. Many birds are extremely variable, and it will make it very hard to recognize a different but similar species if you are not aware of the variation within a species. I birded once with John Schmitt, birder, artist, and illustrator of your field guides, and he once spent 20 minutes looking at every bird in a flock of goldfinches and bird he's seen thousands of times.
Take notes. A simple drawing or a short written description of a bird will help reinforce the memory of that bird. Simple line drawings are sufficient. You don't have to be like the aforementioned Mr. Schmitt. His field notes look like a field guide.
Pay attention to the context of where you see a bird. Don't think Spotted Sandpiper in a palm tree. This is mostly true, though all bets are off when the mega rarity shows up in an unexpected location.
Travel. Working on unfamiliar birds in new locations will challenge your identification skills, and will go a long way in helping you with your familiar patch birds.
And very simply — but most importantly of all — have fun. If you don't like gulls, don't look at them. If you don't care whether or not you reach 400 county birds, don't chase rarities. I don't happen to have that particular mindset. I think it will be "fun" to have 400 birds on my county list.
Thanks again to Alvaro, birder extraordinaire, author of bird books, leader of tours, and currently involved with naming a new species of storm petrel from his native Chile. He happens to enjoy looking at gulls. Visit his website at Alvaros Adventures.
