Winter is a wonderful time of year to get into birdwatching, especially around our internationally important Solent coast.
From October onwards, we are inundated with up to 125,000 ducks, geese and wading birds, all flying here from regions within the Arctic: many migrating thousands of miles to our shores.
Whilst these gloriously persistent, strikingly beautiful, and charmingly characterful creatures can be an absolute joy to watch (and listen to), many appear vexingly similar and can be notoriously difficult to identify.
Here’s some simple tips from Ranger Tony to help you name that bird in one!
As a seasoned birdwatcher myself, I still struggle, on occasions, to identify similar looking birds during the winter months. So, I simply go back to the basics of looking at the different features a bird has to help me name it correctly.
Focus on features
The next section will highlight the main features to look out for and, with a decent pair of binoculars and a trusty bird guide, you can hopefully gain greater proficiency in spotting and naming the birds you are watching.
The highlighted features are in no particular order but are simply general identification tools to help you along the way. Once we’ve got the basic features to look out for under our belt, we’ll have a look at a number of birds that look similar and the features and characteristics that separate them one from another.
1. Bills
Every bird has its own unique bill adaption to suit its diet and the way it feeds.
Most medium and large waders such as the black-tailed godwit and redshank, have long, thin bills designed for probing around in mud in search of worms and snails. Coastal ducks such as the teal or wigeon use their flat, lamellae-lined bills to filter small items of food from the water. Other birds such as the turnstone have thick-based bills designed for turning over large stones and clumps of seaweed.
So, the length and shape of the bill, as well as the colouration, are good features to take note of. One caveat to that is that if the bird has been feeding in the mud, the bill may not be a ‘true’ colour, so bear that in mind. The shape of the bill will obviously be unchanged! So, the size and shape of the bill is the important identification feature but, if you can see the colour too, then this is also a good aid with identification.
2. Legs
Legs, like bills, are adapted to a bird’s feeding environment. Long-legged waders have the advantage of being able to wade further out into the intertidal waters, whilst keeping their body dry, searching for food others cannot reach.
Herons and egrets have long toes to help them with weight distribution as they walk over reeds and other aquatic vegetation. Ducks have obvious webbed feet which make them more adept swimmers, although you’re less likely to see a duck’s feet if they are in the water feeding!
A bar-tailed godwit’s long legs
Many birds have brightly coloured legs too. The redshank, for example, has bright orange legs, as do turnstones and ringed plovers. The colour they show is derived from carotenoids, a colour pigment found in plants, algae and photosynthetic bacteria, which come from their diet.
Colourful bare parts such as legs (and bills) are thought to be a low-risk way of signalling to others of the same species and is also a reliable sign of the bird’s condition – those with the brightest colours will be those that are most successful at finding nutritious food.
However, a note of caution, as with the long mud-probing bills of the large and medium sized waders, colourful legs can get covered in a coating of mud as the bird is feeding – so size rather than colour is the most important identification factor. But, as with bills, use the colour of a bird’s legs if you can see them.
3. Size
Talking of size, the relative size of a bird is also an important feature. When the tide is right and the mudflats, with their bountiful food supply, have been exposed, many coastal birds will gather in often large numbers to feed. This is a good time to take note of the relative size of the birds you are watching with each other. If you have curlews, godwits, turnstones and dunlins all feeding together it’s easier to get a sense of their true size.
A group of waders
Once you become familiar with the size of a dunlin, let’s say, you can then use that knowledge to identify similar sized birds such as sanderling or knot. If you’re familiar with the size of a redshank, and you know a turnstone is approximately half the size of a redshank, you immediately know how to identify a turnstone based on size. The more you watch birds, the more you will automatically check the size of one bird against another and as you do so your proficiency in naming a bird correctly will increase.
4. Colour and pattern
The next feature to take note of is colour and pattern. A bird’s colour is closely linked to its habitat type. It can help birds hide from predators by camouflaging them and is also a method of attracting attention when courting and finding a mate.
The different patterns of colour seen on bird’s feathers, like the colour of bills and legs, is a way of helping to identify their own species. Many of our coastal birds such as shelducks, wigeons, teals, oystercatchers and kingfishers have very bold, striking patterning on their bodies, and this can be a useful tool for identification. When you see a blur of electric blue and orange darting over water, most of us recognise the flash of colour as a kingfisher, even though our glimpse is often fleeting and obscure!
Again, there is a caveat to using colour as an identification tool. Some birds, at this time of year, are casting off their summer plumage and developing their winter colouring. Black-tailed godwits, for instance, have a lovely coppery-red colouring from head to breast during the summer months. At the beginning of the winter season, many arriving godwits are still sporting a partial summer colour, while others are in full winter plumage.
Black-tailed godwit in more vivid summer plumage
The same can be said of turnstones, dunlins and sanderlings. As the season progresses and each species fully develops its winter plumage, using colour patterning as an identification tool becomes much easier and useful until, of course, the winter season draws to an end and many of our visitors start to turn to their summer plumage once again.
5. Habitat
Another useful tool to aid identification is the habitat you see a bird feeding in. Many, if not all the waders, will feed mainly on the open mudflats and saltmarsh areas exposed by a falling tide. Where the mudflats have a rocky shoreline with a covering of seaweed, this is often the feeding habitat of busy and attentive turnstones.
Turnstones feeding among seaweed
Other birds like the greenshank and teal are relatively shy birds and like the safety of nearby gulleys or vegetation. As you spend more time birdwatching, you will come to associate certain habitats with certain birds and this can help with developing your identification skills.
6. Using our new knowledge
So, let’s look at two small waders that we’ll see in large numbers around the Solent as the winter season progresses – the dunlin and the sanderling. They are probably two of the most difficult small waders to tell apart, along with the knot, especially at the beginning of the season, but let’s give it a go!
A dunlin – a longer bill with a slight curve
A sanderling with a shorter, straighter bill
Both are of a similar size. Both have short, black bills but if you look carefully, you’ll see the dunlin’s bill is slightly longer than the sanderling’s and has a downward curve to it. Both have black legs, so they don’t help us here with identification.
Colour and habitat will help tell these beautiful birds apart. Once the two birds have entered full winter plumage, the sanderling takes on a whitish-silvery hue, while the dunlin becomes brownish grey in colour on its upperparts.
Both birds can be seen on mudflats and marshes, but both have different feeding techniques.
The dunlin can be seen feeding using a quick probing action, much like a sewing machine needle at work, searching for their favourite foods. The sanderling, however, is a ‘snatcher’ and can be seen darting back and forth along the water’s edge waiting for the waves to churn up its favourite foods such as marine worms, molluscs, sandhoppers and other small animals before darting into the surf to collect them. No other wader feeds like a sanderling!
To make things a little more complicated, we sometimes get another wader passing through called the knot.
In size it is larger than the dunlin, about the size of a blackbird, and is more pale grey in colour. Knots appear dumpier with a short neck and a head that looks too small for its body.
The knot’s bill is also shorter and straighter than the dunlin’s and their legs are pale grey-green in colour.
But, around the Solent, you are more likely to encounter the dunlin and sanderling in significant numbers.
A knot
7. Birdsong
One identifying feature I haven’t mentioned is bird call and song. As a beginner birdwatcher, it is hard enough trying to identify a bird visually, let alone by the voice it has!
But it is a tool, once you have mastered the visual indicators, that you will naturally want to familiarise yourself with. You can read about some of the more distinctive bird calls in our feature about an alternative coastal dawn chorus.
8. Practice
However, the best way to develop your bird identification skills is to get out as often as possible and simply practice, practice, practise!
Now you’ve got the basic skills for identifying birds – good luck and happy birdwatching.
