I offer only two New Year’s Resolutions for birders in 2026, and they are completely opposite. For less experienced birders: resolve to use every tech tool available. For more experienced birders: resolve to use no tools at all. Bear with me.
It wasn’t that long ago that the only identification tools available to budding birders were binoculars and a guidebook. For the first ten years of my young birding life, I had no binoculars. My first guidebook was “A Guide to the Most Familiar American Birds”, authored by Herbert Zim in 1956. It had only 129 birds in it.
Sometime in my late teens, I upgraded to Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to the Birds.” The first edition was published in 1934. I’m pretty sure I possessed the third edition, printed in 1947.
Compare these tools to what’s available today. Even budget-priced binoculars have vastly improved in quality. Bookstore shelves are lined with great guidebooks. My favorite guidebook is now a downloadable app for my smartphone.
When I first joined the Penobscot Valley Chapter of Maine Audubon in 1986, the statewide rare bird alert was recorded on an answering machine. The cassette tape was updated once a week. If something truly rare showed up, a friend might call you at home, although there were no cell phones. Word spread slowly.
Nowadays, email alerts arrive constantly from Maine Audubon and eBird. Word spreads quickly, maybe too quickly. Rare birds often receive an overwhelming number of admiring visitors.
Over the years, developers worked to create a device that could identify birds by their songs. Most attempts were awful. Then along came Merlin, the free downloadable app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s not perfect, but it’s helpful.
For inexperienced birders, I recommend using every tool available. It still takes a long time to develop birding skills, but not as long as it used to, nor should it.
Of course, the fastest and easiest way to get experience is to steal it from someone else. Going out with experts is the time-honored way to learn more quickly. There are more Audubon walks and bird festivals than ever, and some of these should go on your 2026 to-do list promptly.
Now, for experienced birders, how about a New Year’s Resolution to go out birding without any tools? None. I’ve heard it described as “birding naked,” but I don’t think that should be taken literally.
Leave Merlin behind. You know many of the songs you’re hearing. More importantly, you know what you don’t know. If you hear something you can’t identify, that bird is likely unusual for your area, and worth tracking down. What better way to learn a new song than by having to work for it?
Merlin can be a useful tool, despite its sporadic errors. When I travel, I am apt to pull out my smartphone to get Merlin’s advice on a bird sound that doesn’t occur in Maine. But then I put it away again. I’ll never learn the song myself if Merlin does all the work.
Leave the guidebook behind. Every bird has its own unique field marks, and every book details them. To improve your field identification skills, try to memorize what its field marks are. Birds seldom cooperate, flitting away just as you’re reaching for the book. It’s best to look at the bird and observe every detail you can, before the little twerp disappears. It’ll be easier to remember it the next time, too.
Leave binoculars behind. Most bird identification is done by sight and sound. Ordinarily, that’s enough. However, for a distant and silent bird, other clues will prove helpful.
Birds spin off many clues — how they fly, how they walk, how they perch. Are they high in the trees, or down in the bushes? Are they alone, or in a flock? You won’t always notice these details when you easily identify a bird through your binoculars. But sometimes, it’s the little things that matter.
Kinglets and nuthatches flick their wings. Chickadees don’t.
Red-eyed vireos sing from treetops, obscured by foliage. Blue-headed vireos tend to be lower and more exposed. Eastern warbling vireos like thin, deciduous foliage, frequently near water.
Alder flycatchers like to perch low in sparse vegetation. Eastern wood-pewees like to perch high in mature forest. Great-crested and olive-sided flycatchers are comfortable at the tops of trees.
This is the stuff you’ll notice when you’re forced to look. So, this year, force yourself to look. Bird naked once in a while.