Welcome back to the Birding University Shorebirds Study Series! If you’ve worked through Shorebirds 101 and the 201-level lessons of this Study Series, you’ve already started to build a strong foundation for understanding, identifying, and finding this beloved but challenging group of birds.
At the 201 level, we introduced and applied our Foundations of Field ID to shorebird identification. We took elements like size and shape, bill structure, legs and posture, color patterns, behavior, habitat, and vocalizations and ran them through a shorebird filter. These foundations may seem simple, but they’re worth the effort of internalizing and working through in the field.
The goal now is to move into the 301 level, where we can build on the basics and dig deeper into the features we find on a mystery bird.
When we learn to identify birds, it’s easy to think of ourselves as moving through four rooms defined by two dimensions: knowing versus not knowing, and conscious versus unconscious.
A new birder often starts with unconscious not knowing: they don’t know what they don’t know. This is akin to entering the 201 level of birding as we’ve defined it in our system. As they gain experience, they move into conscious not knowing and become aware of the gaps in their knowledge. With practice, some skills become unconscious knowing—identifying a bird without consciously working through every field mark. The last two comfortably fall within our 301 level, which we feel is intermediate. The most experienced birders occupy conscious knowing: they know what they know, but are equally aware of what they don’t. Those birders would sit at the 401 level or above.
All this said, one of the biggest transitions from foundational to intermediate bird identification is learning that the Foundations of Field ID elements we start with are only the beginning. That doesn’t mean we stop using those foundations as we advance. No, instead, they become ingrained in our efforts. Letters of the alphabet that require no thought at all.
So, at the 201/beginner level, a bird might best be described as small, compact, and short-legged, with a medium-length straight bill. That’s useful. But at the 301/intermediate level we can go further with our descriptions.
For instance, we can answer questions like: How long is the bill relative to the head? How attenuated or stretched out is the body? Does the bird’s plumage appear fresh and crisp or old and worn?
The beautiful thing is the answers to such questions aren’t necessarily field marks that you need to memorize for every species. You don’t need to have a matrix of anatomical and plumage characteristics in your head every time you see a bird. Instead, individual field marks form the building blocks of a visual language. They are the letters, sounds, and syllables that eventually shape words, sentences, and meaning. At the 301 level, size and shape, color patterns, and behavior combine with new elements to add meaning and context.
The more familiar you become with these components, like learning the base words of a new language, the easier it becomes to recognize patterns across species and define new words and sentences presented before you.
As we’ve stated in our Bird Topography series, the head of a bird contains enormous amounts of information due to the patterns derived from individual feather tracts. Unfortunately, shorebirds don’t always have boldly patterned faces. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule (e.g., Ruddy Turnstone). But the faces of this group are usually a bit more subtle, perhaps with an eyebrow here or there. Further, shorebirds are often observed at a distance where subtle patterns disappear. They’re also very active foragers and either constantly move their heads and bills or tuck them in as they sleep.
But get a bird in at closer range, and the arrangement of the eye, bill, crown, supercilium, and auricular (ear coverts) can provide valuable clues.
When studying the head, pay attention to:
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