Covering more than 22,000 acres of forested glacial hills, kettle lakes and prairies, the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest offers a variety of habitats for birds. Fall is a great time to catch both migrating and resident birds.
How to Identify a Bird
It can be helpful to consider the size and shape, color pattern, behaviors, and habitat.
Color Pattern
When you are describing the colors seen on a bird, it is very helpful to have some idea of the vocabulary that corresponds to where those colors are found. WildlifeSouth.com provides excellent illustrations of the various parts of a bird (View Bird Identification - Birding Basics).
One of the challenges of identifying a bird based on color patterns is that in some species, birds can look strikingly different if they are male or female. Consider the two birds below:
Male Red-Wing Blackbird | Female Red-Wing Blackbird |
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The bird on the left is easily recognizable as a red-winged blackbird. However, it would be easy to assume that the bird on the right is an entirely different species when it is actually a female. Notice the similarities in body size, general shape, and beak size that can be helpful in correctly identifying the bird. It is common for juvenile birds to have different patterns and colors than adults, and for birds in the spring and summer to have different patterns and colors than the same birds in the fall and winter.
Bird Size
While it seems relatively straightforward to say how big something is, it can be quite challenging to accurately assess the size of a fast-moving bird bouncing through the vegetation. It is quite useful to have a set of birds that you know well that can serve as a comparison. For example, many people are familiar with hummingbirds, sparrows, robins, crows, ducks and geese. Being able to assess whether a new bird is closer in size to, say, a sparrow than to a robin can help narrow down the possible species. Below, we have organized some of the more common birds of the State Forest according to this size comparison.
Bird Shape
Being able to recognize the general shape of a bird can be very helpful in identifying its species, especially in combination with information about its size and habitat type. Ask A Biologist provides visuals on how to recognize different bird shapes - chicken like, duck like, gull like, hawk like, hummingbird, etc. (View Bird Shape Silhouettes).
The shape of the bill can also be a particularly helpful clue. Is it long and pointed for stabbing and probing? Hooked for ripping and tearing? Short, strong and cone-shaped for cracking open seeds? Making decisions about whether a bill is “long” or “short” can be challenging when you are looking through binoculars. Try to compare the bill to the width of the head. For example, downy woodpeckers and hairy woodpeckers can look very similar in the field, and the length of their bill is one of the best cues to telling them apart. A downy woodpecker’s bill is about half as long as its head whereas the length of the bill and the width of the head of a hairy woodpecker are close to equal.
Downy Woodpecker | Hairy Woodpecker |
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Bird Behavior
Sometimes, birds give us clues to their identity through how they act as well as how they look. For example, most people are familiar with the ruby-throated hummingbird’s ability to hover and to fly both forward and backward. The American kestrel also has an ability to hover during flight, so that it can scan an open field before dropping down to pounce on an unsuspecting insect such as a large grasshopper.
Tail bobbing is another behavioral cue to identification. A bird that is smaller than a sparrow and staying relatively close to the ground, frequently bobbing its tail during spring migration might be a palm warbler whereas a similar warbler that stays further from the ground and does not bob its tail might be a Cape May warbler. A robin-sized shorebird wading along the edge of a wetland bobbing its tail might be a spotted sandpiper but a similar bird in this habitat that does not bob its tail might be a solitary sandpiper. A gray and white bird about the size of a large sparrow that is perched on a tree with a very erect posture that is bobbing its tail might be an Eastern phoebe, whereas a similar species not bob its tail might be an Eastern wood pewee.
Foraging behavior can be an important cue to a bird’s identity. Insect eating birds might drill into the bark of trees (woodpeckers and nuthatches), probe cracks and crevices in bark (warblers), sift through the leaflitter on the forest floor (robins and other thrushes), probe into mud or soft soils (sandpipers and woodcocks), sit on a perch until they fly out to catch a passing insect (flycatchers), or cruise through open spaces catching insects on the wing (swallows, swifts, and nighthawks). Birds that eat seeds or fruits or that hunt for vertebrate prey also frequently have distinctive foraging styles.
Migratory behavior can also provide essential information to help with species identification. If I were birding in the state forest in February, it is very unlikely that I would see an ovenbird, whereas this warbler species is fairly abundant in the Southern Unit during the summer. Spring and fall migrations can bring a broader diversity of birds that we see in either winter or summer, as many species are using the state forest as a critical stopover for resting and feeding before continuing north in the summer or south in the winter.
Bird Habitat
Where you are seeing the bird can provide important information to help you identify it. In Kettle Moraine State Forest - Southern Unit, we have a wide variety of habitats ranging from wet or dry prairies to oak savannahs to deciduous, evergreen or mixed forests. On the aquatic side, we have wetlands including marshes and fens, ephemeral ponds, lakes and streams. Some birds, such as American crows and northern cardinals, tend to be habitat generalists and can be found throughout the State Forest. Others, such as the Henslow’s sparrow and bobolink, are specialists and found in only a narrow range of habitats.
Bird Calls
Identifying birds by the songs they sing and calls they produce takes time, but when you are familiar with the general types of sounds produced by birds, the written descriptions of bird calls you might find in a field guide can make much more sense. Biologists at Arizona State University have developed a very useful tool for being able to hear the difference between, say, a ‘honk’ and a ‘quack’ or a ‘twitter’ and a ‘trill.’ Ask a Biologist provides audio recordings of the various bird calls (view bird calls).
In the field, many bird watchers use the Merlin app on their smartphone to assist with identifying birds by sound. If you can get a clear recording of a bird in the field, Merlin can often identify the call. Remember that this technology, while amazing, is not to be trusted to be 100% accurate. Any identification by Merlin should be substantiated with visual identification of the bird and a critical assessment of the likelihood of that bird being in that location at that time of year.
Birds of the KMSFSU
American Crow
American Goldfinch
Male American Goldfinch
Female American Goldfinch
American Robin
American Tree Sparrow
Bald Eagle
Barn Owl
Barred Owl
Black-Capped Chickadee
Blue Jay
Brown-Headed Cowbird
Male Brown-Headed Cowbird
Female Brown-Headed Cowbird
Canada Goose
Cedar Waxing
Chipping Sparrow
Common Grackle
Coopers Hawk
Dark-Eyed Junco
Downy Woodpecker
European Starling
Great Blue Heron
Hairy Woodpecker
House Finch
Male House Finch
Female House Finch
House Sparrow
Indigo Bunting
Great Horned Owl
Mallard Duck
Morning Dove
Northern Cardinal
Male Northern Cardinal
Female Northern Cardinal
Purple Finch
Male Purple Finch
Female Purple Finch
Purple Martin
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-Wing Blackbird
Male Red-Wing Blackbird
Female Red-Wing Blackbird
Red-Tailed Hawk
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Male Hummingbird
Female Hummingbird
Sandhill Crane
Song Sparrow
White-Breasted Nuthatch
White-Crowned Sparrow
White-Throated Sparrow
Turkey
Turkey Vulture
How to Learn More
If you enjoyed this article, there are a few ways to learn more about native plants.
Visit Headquarters
Located within the Kettle Moraine State Forest - Southern Unit Headquarters, the Nature History Museum includes various displays showcasing rare plant community, pollinators & prairie flowers, birding, glacial formations, and more! The gift shop offers various books to learn more about native birds.
iNaturalist Resource
iNaturalist helps you identify plants and animals while generating data for science and conservation. It is a great way to learn more about nature!
Merlin App
The Merlin app can be very useful in identifying birds by sound and it also has a way to input the location, time of year, size, colors, and behavior/habitat of the bird you see in order to get a list of the most likely species it might be.
eBird
Another very useful app is eBird. eBird helps people to track their own bird lists while also sharing information on bird sightings with other birdwatchers and with scientists studying the behavior and ecology of birds. It can give you ideas of where to go birdwatching in order to see new or favorite species. There are several eBird “Birding Hotspots” in the Kettle Moraine State Forest - Southern Unit. By posting your sightings on eBird, you are contributing as a citizen scientist to our knowledge of the Southern Unit!