Outdoors
The BDN outdoors section brings readers into the woods, waters and wild places of Maine. It features stories on hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and recreation, told by people who live these experiences. This section emphasizes hands-on knowledge, field reports, issues, trends and the traditions that define life outside in Maine. Read more Outdoors stories here.
Identifying a bird is easy. Misidentifying a bird is even easier. For instance, I posted a photo of royal terns in last week’s column. They weren’t. They were Caspian terns. I should have noticed the red bill and realized I had retrieved the photo from the wrong folder.
There it is — possibly the biggest challenge that makes bird identification seem harder than it should be. Troublesome pairs.
When you think about it, most birds are easy to identify. Nobody struggles over a robin, blue jay or chickadee. Pigeons are no problem. Great blue herons are great. And blue.
Identification gets harder when it’s a multiple-choice test — for example, with warblers. Two dozen warbler species nest in Maine, and many share the same colors. Likewise, most sparrows are brown. But even warblers and sparrows can be sorted out with practice.
The real trouble comes from troublesome pairs — two or more species that are almost identical. Maine is full of trouble. To avoid trouble, it helps to remember the key distinguishing features that separate these most challenging birds.
Size matters. Downy and hairy woodpeckers are virtually the same color and pattern. But the hairy is three inches larger, with a bill nearly twice as long.
In many years, egrets disperse and visit Bangor’s Essex Woods at the end of summer. Most are great egrets, but snowy egrets sometimes join them. Great egrets are a foot taller than their cousins. When in doubt, note that the great egret has a yellow bill. The snowy egret bill is black.
In late summer, American herring gulls and ring-billed gulls mingle at the shore, and also at the mall. Both are white with black wingtips. Not only is the ring-billed gull 30% smaller, it also has a smaller, daintier bill.
Sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper’s hawks are wicked similar, and both will be migrating soon. Both are backyard predators, dining on feeder birds. The Cooper’s hawk is larger, but it can be easily mistaken for its smaller cousin. When in doubt, I always look at the back of the neck. The nape on a Cooper’s is grayer than the rest of its head. Sharp-shinned hawks show no color variation from nape to crown.
Sometimes, it’s these single clues that yield the answer. Female American black ducks are darker brown than a female mallard, but that may not be obvious as they fly by. However, the mallard has a white wing patch. The black duck shows only blue.
Hopefully, upland bird hunters hitting the woods this fall can tell the difference between a huntable ruffed grouse and an off-limits spruce grouse. The females of both species are brown, though the spruce grouse is a darker, golden brown. When in doubt, the tail tip of the ruffed grouse is gray. It’s brown on a spruce grouse. One clue. Problem solved.
Northern Maine has an equal number of hermit and Swainson’s thrushes in the woods. Both will soon be on the move, heading south. The Swainson’s thrush is darker with a spookier looking eye, but there is one clue that makes the correct identification automatic. The hermit thrush has a rusty tail. The Swainson’s thrush doesn’t.
Late summer is full of trouble. Shorebirds move through in big numbers over the next three weeks, and the little ones all look alike. Semipalmated sandpipers are slightly larger than least sandpipers, but slightly smaller than western sandpipers. Least sandpipers are browner with yellowish legs. Semipalmated sandpipers are brownish gray with dark legs. Western sandpipers are uncommon in the east but appear sporadically among the other peeps. They are about the same color as the others, with dark legs, but show a tiny bit of redness in the shoulders and on the crest.
Blackburnian, blackpoll, bay-breasted and Cape May warblers are easy to tell apart in breeding plumage. But when they change to their fall colors, they look annoyingly similar. Blackpoll and bay-breasted warblers are the most problematic. They have similar wing bars, and both turn dull greenish in fall. However, the blackpoll has yellowish legs. The bay-breasted legs are dark.
Cape May warblers have a distinctive yellowish collar in autumn. Blackburnian warblers extend the yellow farther down the throat, with an all-white belly.
It’s these little differences that make all the difference. With increased experience, you’ll also develop the habit of looking for these tiny clues. So what if you make an identification mistake? Even an experienced birder can forget to notice whether that tern’s bill is red or orange.
