Bird Identification

Birds of the Denver Metro Area

There are so many birds that can be found in the Denver Metro area that sometimes, it's easy to forget they are there. Bird song is common in the morning and afternoon, but do you know what birds are making those songs? Learn more about birding and bird identification with this guide to local birds and go outside! How many can you find? Tune your ears, hone those eagle eyes, and get ready to explore the diversity of birds around you every day. After you practice, join us for a bird identification Kahoot game!

Tips for Birding

What is Birding?

Any activity where you enjoy birds or try to identify them by their appearance or song is known as birding. Some birders choose to record their sightings, but others don't. In fact, races to observe the most birds in a year or even a single day can get very competitive! Don't believe me, check out The Big Year. But birding can be a very relaxing activity and a nice way to enjoy nature, too. Many people can't recognize birds they see or hear frequently, but with a few tips and tricks, you will be an excellent birder in no time!

The Cornell Lab Global Big Day encourages birders around the globe to record as many bird species as they can in 24 hours. This year's Big Day is May 9th 2020. You're getting started just in time to participate!

Tips for Birding

Observe your bird as closely as you can for as long as you can. Pay attention to its size, unique colors and color patterns, special markings, the sound it makes, and what the bird is doing. This will help your identification.
Use a local field guide or the Merlin Bird ID app to look through birds that are commonly found in your area. Many birds look alike, so narrowing it down to birds found in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, or Denver is helpful and will make your identification more accurate.
Identify your bird with song over colors or patterns. Although many birds are similar in size or color, they often have very unique songs or calls. When in doubt, use the song or call to help you identify your bird.
Pay attention to color patterns. All individuals of the same species will have the same color pattern. Even a small difference in color pattern can be used to tell the difference between two species of birds. For example, mourning doves (left) and Eurasian collared doves (right) are almost identical, except for the unique dark 'collar' of the collared dove.

Birding on Your Phone

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has developed some of the best apps for birding in the world to help you identify and record your sightings. If you want to record your bird sightings, download eBird from the Cornell lab and create an account. You can select birds from a list of common species in your area, record how many you saw, where they were, and when you made your sighting. These data can be used by scientists to answer questions about bird habitats and migration. The data you enter could be critical to helping birds in your area!

To help you get started with birding, Merlin Bird ID from the Cornell Lab will guide you through a series of questions about the bird you saw. Using those questions, it will give you a list of possible birds in your area that fit that description. This is a great app to help get you started because you don't have to know any birds or identification tricks. The app will show you many pictures and play bird songs and calls for each choice to help you identify your bird.

Bird ID

Birding Field Guides

A field guide is a book or document that you can carry with you on your birding expedition! Birding field guides can be local, like this one offered by the Chatfield Audubon Society, or extensive collections of every bird in North America. When starting your birding adventure, the more local your field guide the better! That way, you have fewer birds to sort through and all of them are likely to be found in your area. I have created a field guide to local birds I have found in my own yard or on local neighborhood nature trails. They are very common, so you have likely seen or heard most of them. Download and/or print this guide below to help you get started! I have also included links to videos of recognizable bird sounds below.

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