If you’re interested in birding, but you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend that you get actually good at looking at birds. I mean looking at the key features of a bird, that distinguish them from other birds. You can have an excellent field guide, and a clear look at an unfamiliar bird, but if you’re not sure what to look for, you can mis-identify quite easily.

Guideline 1: Take in the Whole Bird — The white brow of a female red-breasted grosbeak, for instance, is shared by the Carolina wren; if all you were taking note of in a new bird is its brow, you really wouldn’t have enough to go on.

The first thing you should try to figure out is what general sort of bird you’re looking at. Some species are instantly recognizable, but most aren’t so easy, so before you try to figure out a species, try to figure out what broader category of bird it is. If it’s a swimming bird, is it a duck? a goose? a loon? a merganser? something else? If it’s a large bird perched in a tree, is it a raptor or some sort of crow? You might not be able to tell this right away, but it’s where you should start.

This is especially tricky, yet especially key, in identifying songbirds. Half of all birds are members of the order Passeriformes, whose name means “sparrow-shaped”. Passerine birds are often called “songbirds” or “perching birds”, and they all have generally similar bodies relative to other, more exotic sorts of birds like ostriches, penguins, and woodpeckers. Once you’ve identified a passerine (or likely passerine) you’ll want to try to get a bit more specific. Size and silhouette matter here. Wrens, for instance, are rather small, have egg-shaped bodies, long slim beaks, and long tails that they hold cocked up. Sparrows look similar but are less round, have shorter, stouter beaks, and shorter tails which are generally held straight. Just from silhouette you can tell a wren from a sparrow.

In flying birds, wing shape can be key. Falcons and hawks look and behave similarly, but falcons have pointed wings, while hawks have rounded wings; eagles, furthermore, can often be identified by long finger-like feathers extending from the ends of their wings.

Guideline 2: Scan the Field Marks — The author Roger Tory Peterson, who wrote one of the first modern birding guides, introduced the idea of “field marks”. These are the obvious, diagnostic marks that can be noted in the field when trying to identify a bird. The aforementioned white brows are an example, but there are others. Once you’ve figured out the general sort of bird you’re looking at, scan over the field marks, which can help you identify a particular species. In my ID tips within this birding log, I call out the field marks I look for to identify a species. Understanding field marks requires understanding the parts of a bird.

In South America, there’s a little bird called the multi-colored rush tyrant, which is useful for illustrating field marks because it has a lot of different colors on different body parts. Looking at its head, we see several discrete patches of color. It has a striped crown; the crown is the top part of a bird’s head (especially the central part of it). The crown might also be called the “cap” (as in the black-capped chickadee) especially if the entire top-side of the head is of a single color. More rarely the crown, particularly the forward part of it, is called the “poll” (as in the black-polled warbler or the redpoll)

The yellow stripes over its eyes look a bit like brows, and might be referred to as such, although strictly speaking, in birds brows touch the top of the eye. An eye-stripe is a mark running back from the eye, rather than overtop of it. An eye-ring is a mark running around the eye; these can be unbroken (completely circling the eye) or broken (having gaps), and they can be bold or thin. In many cases, similar species are best distinguished by looking at the eye-stripe or eye-ring.

Looking back at the rush tyrant, we see the sides of its head are blue. The feathers in front of the eye are the lores, while the feathers behind the eye are the auriculares and/or the cheeks (the two terms aren’t quite synonymous, as the cheeks are lower, generally). The feathers behind and below the beak are the throat. The rush tyrant has a white upper throat that quickly turns yellow to match the breast. Some birds have throats that match the breast, while others have distinct throats; a chickadee, for example, has a black throat but a pale breast. The back of the head is the nape; in the case of the rush tyrant, the nape is green. Some birds, most notably falcons, have malar stripes, which run vertically down their faces, rather than running back.

The underparts of a bird include the throat along with the breast, belly, sides, and vent. The breast is roughly the front half of a bird’s underside; in swimming birds, the breast is the forward part that sits in the water. The belly is the area back from the breast, running between the legs; often it is paler than the breast (as is the case in the rush tyrant). The sides are the parts under and just below the wings. The vent is the underside base of the tail; in the rush-tyrant, the vent is a conspicuous red.

The upperparts of a bird include the crown and nape as well as the back, wing coverts, wings, and rump. The back is self-explanatory; often when perched the wings are folded over much of the back. The wing coverts are the bird’s “shoulders”, the part of a folded wing that generally blends into the back (though not always, as in the red-winged blackbird). The rump is the upperside base of the tail, often visible between folded wings. The wings, when perched, are generally only visible as long flight feathers running back from the coverts. In flight, wings are more fully visible. Different birds may have different markings on the wings; especially diagnostic are edges, wing-bars, and sometimes the speculum. Some birds are distinguished by dark or light color lining their wings’ leading or trailing edges. Wing-bars are bands of differently-colored feathers running across the upper-middle of the wings. They can be broad or thin, single or doubled. The rush-tyrant has single, broad white wing-bars. A speculum is a distinct patch of feathers in the inner trailing edge of the wing; speculums are mostly associated with ducks, where they are often diagnostic. For instance, a female mallard has a blue speculum with a white edge, where the similar black duck has an all-blue speculum and the similar gadwall has an all-white speculum. Some parrots also have a distinct speculum.

Bird’s tails can be anywhere from almost invisibly short to many times longer than the rest of the bird’s body. Tails can take many shapes: the long plumes of a pheasant, the short fan of a duck, the long, slim blade of a wren, the folded keel of a grackle, the stiff brace of a woodpecker. When looking at an unfamiliar bird, pay attention to the tail, to its length, its shape, and its color. These can be key clues to an ID.

Now that you know the parts of a bird, you can better understand written descriptions of what to look for. When you see an unfamiliar bird, try to set any conspicuous markings or body-part shapes in your memory, as many as you can. Markings and shape are often more helpful in IDing birds than their color. Lighting conditions differences between plumages can throw color off, but the field marks often stay the same.

Guideline 3: Know the Different Forms Birds can Take — ****Many birds will look different depending on age, season, and gender. Be sure you aren’t only familiar with the appearance of breeding males. These are, in most species, the most striking-looking, so they’re the ones that get depicted in artwork and photographs most commonly. But in many species the females look quite different than males. And birds may have an non-breeding plumage, wherein they lose some or all of their flashy feathers when it isn’t the breeding season. Many birds thus look different in the Fall than in the Spring. If you’re looking for migrant birds passing through an area, be mindful of what they will look like headed one way vs. headed the other.

Also, especially in the months after the nesting season, remember that juvenile birds will look different than adults. By the time they leave the nest, birds will be as large as their parents, but until they are of breeding age they will have a different, often less flashy appearance than their parents. Many species mature quickly, gaining their adult plumage by the next breeding season, but some species will go for years in “prebasic” guise. Bald eagles, for instance, take 5 years to gain their trademark white heads and tails; before then, they’ll appear all-dark brown, with small, pale patches. Gulls, also, will often go years with a dingy, speckled appearance before finally developing the clean white-and-gray those birds are known for. And I’ll never forget agonizing over IDing a juvenile spotted sandpiper, whose spots hadn’t come in yet, beside a river in late summer before I remembered to check all the forms sandpipers in that area take.

And one more thing might confound you: hybrids and domestic birds. If you live where two different species interbreed, you might see birds that share a mix of features. Hybrids aren’t usually included in field guides unless they’re commonly observed, and hybrid birds have fooled many an ornithologist in the past, nevermind amateur birders, so don’t feel bad for not recognizing them. Escaped domestic or captive birds will usually look different than their wild counterparts, having been selectively bred for unnatural size and other traits. Relatively few birds have been truly domesticated; in North America the only widely found domestic birds that can hybridize with wild/feral populations are domestic mallards and rock pigeons. Especially in urban areas, you might see ducks or pigeons with unusual colors, generally in white or brown; these are either escapees or their decendants. In the case of ducks, pay attention to whether you’re seeing a mongrel mallard or whether it’s truly a duck of a different species.

Being able to recognize a species through its full range of plumages is a fine skill in a birder, but even if you can’t recognize a bird right away, remembering to check for female, non-breeding, and juvenile plumages when referencing ID aids later is critical for making a correct ID.