Bird Identifications Characterstics

In the world we can find many species of birds. We can also identify them by lookout their characterstics, either physical or behavioral, colour etc.

1. Identification by size

Size is the most noticeable feature of any life form, and especially birds. A good look at the bird at once helps you place it in a certain bracket. It is important that identification by size is related to certain yardsticks.

It is easy to discribe what we saw, but any description of size can often be subjective and what is big for you may not be so big for some one else, therefore it can be of great help to have something familiar to measure and relate the size of year bird with.

Familiarize yourself with the size of some common birds such as the house sparrow, house crow or the common kite. This way you can confidently say that the bird you saw was smaller than the house sparrow or approxmately the size of a house crow and so on.

2. Identifications by colour

Like size, colour is yet another very obvious feature for identifying birds of same or similar colours do not mecessarily belongs to the same group or family. However, colours is yet another way to short list the bird's identify.

3.Identifications by size

Often it is possible recognise a bird in dim light even against the light, merely by its silhouette appearance. All birds have distinctive shapes. Shape is a combination of physical attributes like posture, build, head, wings, legs and tail. Posture pertains to birds actual carriage, to its stance of "gist" for instance. Some birds swim to fly with their neck curved in a graceful S-shape. Yet other woth their neck stretched up or out front; nocturnal birds such as owls settle erect and across, of perpendicular to a branch, whilst nightjars settle flat and along a branch length.

A bird's build implies wheather a species is slim and shapely or robusf and thick set, long-bodied or shortish. Is the head roundish as in owls or crested as in many bulbuls. The break comes in a vast array of design, either book-tipped as in most birds of prey and shrikes long and dagger-like in kingfisher or short and stout as in seed-eaters.

As the wings pointed like in swifts, longish and broad as in herons or rounded as in warblers? Legs and tail also show variations in size and structure will experience, the shape and form of a bird will help in identifying a bird.

4. Looking for other field-Marks

Since so many species have complicated colour arranged, certain distinctive marking come in very handy. Often these field-marks can help distinguish between species and even between sexes of certain species. These field marks can either further, explicit modificaton of colour and / or in the form of streaks and barring on upper and /or under-bodies, eye stripes, crown stripes, wing bars, tail bands, neck stripes, white or pale rumps, or actual physical modifications, like facial wattles of some peculiar deelopment of certain feathers perhaps in the tail or of the chest.

5. Identification by behaviour

Just like every individual has a personality and temperament, so dies every bird. This is yet another attributes which, with just a bit of observation and experience, begins to assist in bird watching. A wood-pecker can be recognised by its shape and preference for moving on stems and branches, a flycatcher by its habit of making frequent short sallies after winged insects and returning to its perch, a sparrow by its hopping movement whilst larks and pipits by their walk, swifts and swallows by their almost constant flying. But again the swallows can perch on wires and thin branches whilst swift cannot.

6. Flight as an identification clue

Flight is what birds are best known and instantly recognised for. All birds, groups have their distinctive flight which help in ther identification wood-pecker have an undulating flight, while Parakeets fly fast, mostly straight, the Falcon dashes fast and steadily. The Hawks with their roundish wings make a few rapid wings-beats followed by short glide is heron/egret steadily flys with slow wing beats and its head/neck pulled back into its shoulders; whilst cranes and storks fly with the neck sketched out. During ducks, such as pochards trip along and patter along the water surface before taking flight; while the surface-feeders such as pintails and teals directly spring up from the water.

7. Habitat perference and seasons

All birds belongs to a certain habitat and as far as possible most birds perfer to remain in familiar sorroundings. After a few visit you will realise that you see certain birds more or less always in the same area. In a forest you can always exjpect to see different birds in the various layers of tree growth. On the upper leafy branches are purely arboreal birds such as barbets, dronfos, minivets and orioles; the stems and branches are home to the wood-peckers, the upper-middle storeys hold various drongos, bulbuls, babbles, thrushes, the lower bush and scrub have yet other kinds of babblers, bulbuls, warblers and doves.

Free as a bird might seem the fact is that the majority of our feathered friends live in nature seemingly indistinct yet highly organised "cages". It would be pointless to look for a lark in deep forest or woodpeckers in a grass land. How ever there are a variety of micro-habitats inside forest.

8. Calls in field identification.

Just like birds are celebrated for their flight so too are they for their melodious voices most birds have an individuality when it comes to voice. In fact expert bird watchers often rely on their ears as much as their eyes to recognise birds. Birdcalls are not just pleasure they augment your enjoyment of the natural world. Birdcalls are a huge assistancein instantly discovering which bird is present at particular miment in a locality. No matter how well field guides and bird watcher. Friends describe of particular call, ultimately the best jungle will be yourself. Sound difficult but its worth every whistle and scream. "so happy birding".