Bird identification has today almost become a science. Using color, pattern, shape, size, voice, habitat, and behavior, birders are continually finding new ways to distinguish similar species. The bimonthly journal of the American Birding Association, Birding, frequently publishes articles on field identification, while at the annual meetings of the Association, birders attend seminars on how to identify such puzzling groups as storm-petrels, immature gulls, the small sandpipers known as "peeps," and diurnal birds of prey. Birders have spent long hours in the field working out subtle but useful distinctions, such as the differences in the head shapes of gulls, in the wing- and tail-flicking of 'Empidonax' flycatchers, and the flight characteristics of storm-petrels. There are now specialists in the identification of shorebirds, gulls, storm-petrels, shearwaters, and hawks. Clues are being found that allow us to differentiate birds that have long been considered indistinguishable.

Birding has come a long way during its history, and the term "birder" itself, in the evolution of its meaning, reflects the change in our attitude toward birds. For centuries a birder was someone who killed birds, usually for sport or for food; Shakespeare used the term in this sense. The modern meaning of the term arose in the 1940s, as birding became an increasingly popular pastime. Today's birders, armed with binoculars, telescopes, and cameras, and aided by the great collections made by the bird students of the nineteenth century, are vastly more sophisticated than their counterparts of decades ago.

Copyright 1996 Alfred A. Knopf. All rights reserved.