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There’s just about no more popular outdoors hobby than watching birds. There are so many of us who have watched the birds in our gardens or at the city parks, raise and support their families. But every once in a while we have the urge to escape beyond these limited confines and go out into the wild to watch birds in their native habitats.

For those of you who have never had the opportunity to be on a bird watching outing, we’ve listed some helpful tips that hopefully will give you a good basic foundation of necessities you will need in order to best enjoy your time in the outdoors.

1) Many times, in the wild, before you see a bird, you’ll hear it. If you want to improve your skills as a bird watcher, a good way to begin is to learn the sounds that the birds you are interested in make. Part of this will come naturally as the more time you spend in the field bird watching, the better you will become at learning to recognize the different mating calls and vocalizations made by your favorites. For those who want to speed up their learning, there are many CD recordings of the bird calls of literally thousands of birds that are for sale. Use these to practice identifying different species by their songs and sounds.

2) Next, you’ll have to become an expert at identifying the types of shelter and trees that your bird species prefer. This is key to finding their nests and setting up your stakeout. Some prefer to build their nests close to the ground, while others will find the topmost branches of a tree to build their home.

3) What time of the day do your favorite birds like to eat? If you want the best chance of spotting your bird species, you have to know this. Most species prefer to start their foraging just before sunrise and will continue up to noon. Some, however, prefer later in the day and you’ll find them just becoming active before sunset.

4) Probably, one of the most essential pieces of apparatus that will come in handy for you is a spotting scope with a tripod. A regular telescope won’t do as you’ll become frustrated very quickly with it. You need a scope with the proper level of magnification. As birding as become more and more popular, it’s become easier to find many brands of birding binoculars made specifically for bird watchers.

Begin your outing with these tips and you will have established a good foundation for the rest of your birdwatching career.

Ken Lawless writes articles concerning blue bird houses, wooden bird houses, and bird house patterns which you can find on his website.

Tags: bird watching, birding, birds, birdwatching

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.