Getting Started

Birding Audubon  - What you need, backyard birding, and more

Every Second Saturday of the month, some of NFHAS members go on a birding outing - meeting at Sojourner Truth Park at 8 a.m.  Please check the newsletter for more information. This is a good opportunity for beginning birders to go with a more experienced birder.

Birding Guide - getting started    

Please let us know any ideas you have for this page on "getting started" email them to Cindy Jeffrey, cinraney@k-state.edu.  Stories of how you started birding in the Bird Blog.

Binoculars 

Binoculars are not "required" but they sure help! Check out what some of these articles recommend.
Cornell Lab review: All about birds:  Focused on 30 models of 8×42 binoculars—the most popular and versatile binocular style of the last couple of decades.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-cornell-lab-review-affordable-full-size-8x42-binoculars/#

National Audubon Guide:  
Most birders prefer 7- or 8-power binoculars because they’re bright and have a wide field of view, making it easier to find birds and to follow them in flight.
https://www.audubon.org/gear/binocular-guide

Guide Books and Apps:

There are many good bird guides - large (reference) and small (field guides). Peterson is very popular, Sibley's, Kaufman's, National Geographic, etc.  And apps for our phone.

Here is what Chuck Otte wrote about field guides.

 I´m a big fan of books especially bird books. The one in the center is a very well used first edition Sibley. On the right is an equally well used 2nd edition National Geographic. On the left is a second printing (1939) of the first
edition Roger Tory Peterson groundbreaking field guide to birds of the eastern US. (This was a gift from a friend purchased from a used book store in Topeka. It´s signed by the author and was the property of LB Carson, one
of the founding members of KOS and the first treasurer for several years.)

But I digress. When I first started birding I was 4 years old. When I started to read a few years later I would spend hours going through the only three field guides that most birders owned: Peterson east and west edition and the
Golden Guide guide to birds. In the early 1960s, that was pretty much the choices. I would look at the pages of illustrations and try to memorize them all. I would read the text corresponding to each illustration. I remember
Peterson´s writing at the start of Ivory-billed Woodpecker species account, "On verge of extinction if not extinct." Chilling words. I see lots of newer birders stumbling around trying to match up what they are seeing with a
photo on a phone. I´ve seen a lot of folks go down very wrong roads of identification using this method. Being good at bird ID takes time and study.  

There aren´t shortcuts even with today´s technology. By spending time in evenings and whenever just slowly leafing through a field guide you start to understand the subtle difference between. vireos and warblers beaks and body structures. You can stare at the illustrations (or photos, depending on the field guide) and begin to wonder if you´ll ever be able to differentiate any of the Empidonax flycatchers. Which field guide? Field guides, like binoculars
and shoes, need to be tried on. Go to a book store and pick up a copy of Sibley, or Kaufman or Nat Geo and just flip, through them and see which one you like best. Some will say that field guides are out of date. I disagree. It´s
easier, for me, to flip through pages of a book than to scroll endless screens on a phone. But maybe that´s because I´ve been doing it for most of my life. If you own filled guides, spend time browsing through them. Pick a family and
study that family. Take time to read all the pages BEFORE the pictures of the birds. There´s a phenomenal wealth of information in those pages. If you don´t have a field guide, please consider getting one."