How to be a Birder part 4
Hint # 4: Seek them out
While it is true that birds are almost everywhere one goes in the world, there are some places where there are more birds than elsewhere. I love birding in the garden of our home. We are blessed with more birds than most because we have far more trees and bushes than most people.
Good birding places
If there are not many birds in your garden, or you live in a flat or an apartment or perhaps in a high-rise building you will need to deliberately seek them out. There are many excellent birding spots in most cities and towns. Seek out the local parks and gardens and you will be sure to find more birds. Botanic gardens are particularly rich places for birding. Then seek out any lakes, rivers, dams or reservoirs, all excellent places for waterbirds. If there is a beach, shoreline or better, a river estuary, these places will provide yet a different group of birds. Search out local national parks and wildlife reserves. Even zoos can provide excellent birding spots, both inside and outside the aviaries present.
Excursions
By joining a birding club or organisation you will be able to attend their regular meetings and learn of other interesting places to go. By going on any excursions they provide, you can have access to places you may not even know about. Indeed, sometimes the leaders have gained permission to enter private areas or good birding spots to which birders rarely have access.
Warning!
A word of warning: birders love visiting sewage treatment works. That may seem a little extreme but they are highly attractive places for birds, and consequently they are also attractive places for birders. These days they are more often called waste treatment plants or they are sanitised with a ‘wetlands’ name. With effective waste management these are not the smelly locations many people imagine, but are wonderful birding spots. My current favourite is the Laratinga Wetland area near Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills. This area consists of about five artificial lakes with an abundant birdlife, beautiful trees and bushes and an attractive picnic area.
Related articles:
Collared Sparrowhawk
How to be a Birder part 3
Hint # 3 Buy the best binoculars you can afford
Do I need to buy some binoculars to be a birder?
No – but having even cheap binoculars will help you develop your interest in birds. Using binoculars will help you to see the many details of the colours and the feathers and subtle differences between different species. It also helps to identify a bird that is far off.
What kind of binoculars should I buy?
Binoculars come in a variety of magnifications. Somewhere on the body of the binoculars you find some numbers. These numbers will say something like 8×30 or 10×50. The first number refers to the magnification. The second number refers to the diameter of the front lens in millimetres. The smaller numbers usually mean smaller and lighter items to carry which is important if you spend long hours in the field. The 10×50 type gives excellent views of the birds with good magnification but they can get rather heavy after a few hours strung around your neck. Investing in a good harness to carry your binoculars will be money well spent.
How much should I spend on binoculars?
How much have you got? This is really up to the individual. In Australian dollars, some serious birders feel quite happy spending $3000 on excellent quality binoculars. I’m sure they are wonderful, but I can only justify about $100 and I have seen some wonderful birds using cheap binoculars like that.
Bottom line
While the bottom line is your budget, it must be said that you get what you pay for. If you want good quality in your optics, you will have to pay for it. For the general, occasional birding use, anything over $500 Australian is probably overkill. I know many birders would strongly disagree with me. It’s your hobby; pay what you can afford and justify. Personally, if I had $3000 I would rather spend $100 on a perfectly adequate pair of binoculars and use the rest on petrol to go see some wonderful birds. That’s far better than sitting at home with the best binoculars money can buy – and seeing only sparrows and starlings in the backyard.
Link:
- Choosing Binoculars for Birdwatching – a downloadable file from the Bird Observers Club of Australia.
Cattle Egret, Adelaide Zoo
How to be a Birder part 2
Hint # 2: Listen
One of the things I enjoy doing when I wake early is to listen – around dawn – it doesn’t happen too often mind you. I enjoy listening to the dawn chorus of birds. I try to identify all the species by call alone. I also enjoy doing this while camping out bush. Then it is different because I am not always sure what I will hear. When visiting friends or relatives in other parts of the country I am frequently surprised by the different calls coming from the birds outside.
Train your ears to listen
Listening to the birds can be done anywhere, just like watching them. No special equipment is needed. After training your eyes to see the birds in your environment, it is also very important to listen to them. You need to train your ears to listen.
Bird call recordings
There are some helpful resources available that will improve your birding call identification skills. For many years tapes of bird calls have been available. These generally have a short recording of each species. Sometimes the bird names are printed on the cover insert. Sometimes there is a narrator telling the listener what bird call is being played. Now many of these are available on a CD. Far more species can be covered in this format. More recently, birders are turning to using an iPod to store all the bird calls. Some are even taking these into the field to help with identification.
Sheer delight
Whatever method one uses to learn about bird calls, listening to them can be a sheer delight. I few days before writing this I was with my wife having a picnic in the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens in the Adelaide Hills. An Australian Magpie came and sat on our picnic basket and proceeded to entertain us with his beautiful carolling. And all this only a metre away! Magnificent. Click here to read about it.
Australian Magpie
How to be a Birder part 1
Hint # 1: Observe
Birds are everywhere. Even in the Sahara Desert, the busiest city or the cold Antarctic there are birds. Everyone knows what a bird is and generally what distinguishes a bird from other creatures. Although, I’ve seen a few birds that I am not so sure about.
The first rule of birding is:
Observe.
Use your eyes.
Look at the birds in your immediate environment. Look out the window. What birdlife do you see? What birds do you have in your garden or in the street? Did you see any birds on the way to school or work? Were there any birds near the shops when you went shopping? Did you see any birds while waiting at traffic lights, or at the bus stop or while on that train journey?
Keep your eyes open. When you start looking carefully, you will be amazed at the numbers of birds that daily surround your life. Not to mention the great variety of species that shares your part of the world. And watch their behaviour. Birds do some very interesting and quite bizarre things.
King Parrot at Adelaide Zoo
How to be a Birder
Tomorrow I start a series of 20 articles on how to be a birder. A birder is another name for a birdwatcher.
In these articles I have written hints about what to do, the equipment you will need and how to go about this fascinating hobby.
For readers who are experienced in this wonderful pastime called birding, I invite your comments on what I have written, along with any extra hints people might benefit from to enhance their enjoyment of birds.
Grey Butcherbird