1. Become an expert in your local area. Pay attention
to local birds throughout the year. You’ll
learn about each species’ natural history, seasonal
movements, habitat needs, and identification,
and become skilled at discovering new
arrivals and rarities. All that and you’ll save
money and natural resources!
2. Find a birding buddy. Share the fun, and the
expenses, on birding trips.
3. Keep a year list and a backyard list. When
you start keeping track of birds by year and by
place, even pigeons and starlings are new again,
at least for a day. Filling in gaps in your yard or
workplace list will keep you actively birding on
days when you might otherwise stay indoors.
4. Use All About Birds. You can find an amazing
amount of information and rich media to help
you identify birds by sight and sound, learn
about their natural history, improve your skills,
and more at www.allaboutbirds.org. It’s free!
5. Use eBird. Take advantage of the many free
resources available at www.eBird.org, including
visual and sound identification tips
for tricky groups, rare bird alerts, and arrival
and departure dates for many localities.
And eBird helps you keep track of your
location lists, including your life list, for free.
6. Provide smaller bird feeders. Don’t buy cheap
birdseed mixes. Birds avoid most “filler seeds”
which then rot. Instead, put out small amounts
of seed at a regular time each day.
7. Take care of your optics. Keep the rain-guard
on when you’re not using your binoculars. The
most expensive components of good optics are
often the lens coatings—don’t risk scratching
them. Brush dust, sand, and other particles off
with a soft brush and clean with a good lens
cloth, only when they’re actually dirty.
8. Practice “pishing.” Rather than using expensive
audio equipment in the field, try making
whispering spsh psh psh sounds to lure
birds in. If you don’t know what it should sound
like, listen to other birders. Playing recordings
is prohibited in many birding hotspots, and during
the World Series of Birding, because it disrupts
natural behaviors and can be stressful for
birds. Pishing is usually a better alternative, for
both birds and your pocketbook.
Carlin Tedesco © Cornell Lab of Ornithology
9. Learn one field guide well. To find birds most
quickly, pick one field guide, learn it well, and
stick with it. Which is best? Go to a bookstore
or library and look at those covering all of North
America or just the East or West, where you
live. Scan through them, setting aside those that
seem most accessible for you. After you’ve narrowed
the choices, look up five or ten familiar
birds in each to decide which shows them in a
way that seems most true to your eyes.
10. Get the most for your conservation dollars.
During hard economic times, conservation often
falls by the wayside. If you can set aside money
for conservation, give a high priority to habitat
protection, research with conservation implications,
and education to ensure that people care
about birds long into the future.