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gemfyreOkay, before I get ahead of myself teaching you about the birds, I should probably start with birding (or birdwatching). There are a few things you'll need starting out and a few pointers for how to go about it.
Optics
Optics is the fancy word for binoculars and scopes. You put your eye/eyes up to them and everything gets enlarged. They're pretty important for most birding, because most birds will hightail it out of there if you get close enough to get a good look with the naked eye.
Binoculars
The trademark of the birdo. Unless you're just going to be observing large, non-timid birds you'll want a pair of these. Now, the hardcore birdos will sing the praises or brands like Leica
, Swarovski 
(yes, the same company that makes those little crystal knick-nacks), and, to a lesser extent, Zeiss. While these binoculars are things of beauty - they're tough and most come with a lifetime or 20 guarantee, you can drop them and not have to worry. They're also light for their size and give a clear, crisp image, and if they DO get dirty they are waterproof enough that if you wanted you could just wash them in a bucket of water (but generally it's a better idea to use proper cleaning equipment to keep the glazing on the lenses intact). But they also cost as much as a second-hand car (expect to pay around $3,000.00).
Ouch. I know I got into birding because I figured it was a cheap hobby (oh how wrong I was!). I started out with old hand-me-down Pentax binoculars from my dad, which weighed a ton. Then I had got a pair of teeny Optex bins which cost around $40 which did me okay until I dropped them a few times. I now use a much newer pair of Pentax bins with 10x magnification and roof prisms. Some birders prefer 8x (the smaller the magnification, the easier it is to lock onto moving birds, and get more in your viewfinder). You don't really want to go over 10x for a pair of bins, because they'll just be too hard to manage.
Another thing about binoculars, there are two main types - roof prisms and porro prisms. Porro prisms are the typical binoculars most people think of when they think of bins.
The expensive fellas pictured above are roof prism binoculars, these have a straight barrel and are generally easier to handle. I've heard that porros technically have the better optics, but you won't notice the difference, trust me.
So yeah, you don't have to spend a fortune on decent binoculars. Although if you do become a hardcore birdo and come into money, you'll probably want to invest in a really nice pair just to show off.
Spotting scopes/tripods
Spotting scopes were originally used by hunters to get a better look at deer and bears before they shot the poor animal. But they are also very useful for certain types of birding. If you're going to be spending a lot of time looking out over water at waterfowl or waders, you'll want a spotting scope. Scopes sit upon tripods and a provide a sturdy, extra-magnified view which you can pan along and scan area. Watching a flock of a few thousand waders standing on the shoreline from a cliff is near on impossible with binoculars. You don't have enough magnification to ID anything and your arms will shake and you won't see anything well. Most scopes provide between 20x and 40x magnification - but the more you magnify, the harder it will be to get a focussed image. And on a good tripod they are steady, so you can get a good look at that distant bird. Tripods also vary from cheap, lightweight versions, which are great for carrying around but not good in windy conditions, to heavyweight things that won't budge in a hurricane. I currently have a lightweight tripod, but would like to invest in something more sturdy soon.
Field guides
While there are many books about birds, if you're specifically going out birdwatching and want to identify what you see you need a field guide. Field guides list all the birds found in a specified area and should also tell you about their distinguishing features, what envirionment you'll find the bird in, and it's distribution (usually in the form of a map with coloured in areas). They might also give birding tips, and tell you about the bird calls (which is honestly really awkward and subjective when transating a bird call to writing) and maybe about their nests and eggs.
You'll find beginner and photographic field guides around. Beginner guides won't list every bird you might possibly see and photo guides often don't have photos of every species and some of the photos are not very good, it's also unlikely there will be a photo for all plumages (male, female, juvenille, non-breeding, breeding etc). I recommend spending a few dollars more (or sometimes you'll pay the same price) and get a field guide that covers all of Australia. Australia has around 800 species of birds, and these all fit nicely into one book.
Of the non-photographic, Australia-wide field guides, there are only four that matter:
Morcombe - My personal favourite. Michael Morcombe is a Mandurah boy and I've actually met him a couple of times on birdwalks. He does all his own artwork and I just like the layout of his field guides the most. He has colour coded maps, features are pointed out on the actual birds (rather than writing beside the picture) and he attempts to describe calls. He also has a compact guide out which I highly recommend for putting in your daypack and taking with you anywhere you might see birds.
Pizzey & Knight - Probably the most highly regarded of the field guides (Pizzey did the words and Knight does the pictures - Graham Pizzey died a few years back though). This guide is jam-packed with info and the pictures are more photorealistic. I'm not a massive fan of the text on one page and the pictures on another - but at least the correct text is RIGHT beside the correct picture, and the pictures have the birds names on them.
Simpson & Day - Another author/illustrator pairing and the field guide I started out on. Simpson & Day has a plastic wipe-down cover with to scale pictures of beaks of pelagic birds. The idea is if you find a beach-washed specimen, you can put the bill straight on the picture on the cover to try and ID it, and later you can just wipe the sand or blood or whatever right off. Really only useful if you're into pelagics (most birders say waders are hard to learn, waders are EASY compared to pelagic birds). The pictures are nice and the maps are pretty useful, but the pictures have numbers beside the birds and you have to match the numbers with the names on the text side and it's just a slower process, which is not useful when you quickly want to find out what a bird is before it flies away.
Slater - The only field guide I don't own because I think it sucks. Many birders like it because it's half the size of the other guides and easier to lug around, but now Morcombe has released his compact guide it pales in comparison. Despite new editions coming out the information is outdated and innacurate, and he uses names which haven't been used in years. Often the text doesn't match up with the pictures and the maps are just black and white and not at all detailed. Bleh, spend your money on a better guide.
Other things you may want/need
Notepad and pen - to note down what you see. To draw what you see if you're artistically inclined (sometimes a drawing helps with IDing later on). To write poetry, ransom notes, shopping lists, whatever.
A bottle of water and something to nibble on - more or less depending on where you are how long you're going to be.
A raincoat - handy for protecting equipment if not yourself.
A camera - photographing anything but big, tame birds is an almost impossible mission for the regular happy snap photo taker. But if you're serious about photography, birds are beautiful and challenging subjects.
What to wear
Something drab, khakis, browns, stuff that will help you blend in. Bright colours and stark white will make you stand out and startle birds, which makes them fly away, which makes them harder to see. If you're doing some serious traipsing in the bush make sure you have sturdy boots and long pants/long sleeves as required. The Aussie bush is prickly and filled with ticks.
A hat and sunscreen are also a good idea.
Where and when to bird
People say the best birding is in the morning or in the evening. I don't find this to be the case. Depending on the location and the birds any time of day can be good. I've been birding at the "ideal" times and hardly seen anything, but one of my lunch breaks at Herdsman Lake yielded 10 species of ducks. One thing to consider is the sun though, don't walk into the sun, it will make things impossible to see. And it's also hottest/most risk of skin cancer when the sun is out in force.
The Swan Coastal Plain has a very obliging chain of lakes running down it, most of which have awesome waterfowl birding opportunities. Herdsman Lake and Lake Monger are the best in my opinion, but Lake Joondalup and Bibra Lake are also great for beginners.
The great thing about birds is that they are everywhere. I find I'm always birdwatching. On the drive to work I'll be mentally noting, "Corella, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, hrm haven't seen one of them in a while, Magpie, oh look Pacific Black Duck in drain there, Australian White Ibis flying over..." etc. Any garden or bit of bushland is good for birdwatching. The more natives in an area the better - this will give you a greater variety of birds.
What to do
Birds are flighty creatures (ahem, excuse the lame pun). Approach them slowly and quietly and use your binoculars to view them rather than getting too close. Listen for calls. I've made a point of learning calls, because it's so much easier to identify a bush bird by call and then know what you're looking for rather than just looking by itself.
Most birders keep lists of the birds they have seen. Life lists (all the birds you have seen in your lifetime), area lists, yearly lists, seasonal lists, daily lists (I keep these). Heck, some people even record birds they ID the call of during the cricket on TV! Or you don't have to list at all. Whatever you like! Some birders prefer to just sit and look closely at a bird, be it rare or common while some are chronic tickers, straight onto the next bird once they have ticked off a species. For me birding appeals to my need to collect something, but I find it worthwhile because records of birds provide important information about the health of the environment, as well as giving me something to do whenever I'm outdoors and giving me an excuse to travel. You may prefer to watch birds because you think they're beautiful and want to paint them later, or because you're intruged by the physics of flight. There are no rules to birding (although some birdos would have you believe otherwise). Just enjoy yourself!
Optics
Optics is the fancy word for binoculars and scopes. You put your eye/eyes up to them and everything gets enlarged. They're pretty important for most birding, because most birds will hightail it out of there if you get close enough to get a good look with the naked eye.
Binoculars
The trademark of the birdo. Unless you're just going to be observing large, non-timid birds you'll want a pair of these. Now, the hardcore birdos will sing the praises or brands like Leica
, Swarovski (yes, the same company that makes those little crystal knick-nacks), and, to a lesser extent, Zeiss. While these binoculars are things of beauty - they're tough and most come with a lifetime or 20 guarantee, you can drop them and not have to worry. They're also light for their size and give a clear, crisp image, and if they DO get dirty they are waterproof enough that if you wanted you could just wash them in a bucket of water (but generally it's a better idea to use proper cleaning equipment to keep the glazing on the lenses intact). But they also cost as much as a second-hand car (expect to pay around $3,000.00).Ouch. I know I got into birding because I figured it was a cheap hobby (oh how wrong I was!). I started out with old hand-me-down Pentax binoculars from my dad, which weighed a ton. Then I had got a pair of teeny Optex bins which cost around $40 which did me okay until I dropped them a few times. I now use a much newer pair of Pentax bins with 10x magnification and roof prisms. Some birders prefer 8x (the smaller the magnification, the easier it is to lock onto moving birds, and get more in your viewfinder). You don't really want to go over 10x for a pair of bins, because they'll just be too hard to manage.
Another thing about binoculars, there are two main types - roof prisms and porro prisms. Porro prisms are the typical binoculars most people think of when they think of bins.
The expensive fellas pictured above are roof prism binoculars, these have a straight barrel and are generally easier to handle. I've heard that porros technically have the better optics, but you won't notice the difference, trust me.So yeah, you don't have to spend a fortune on decent binoculars. Although if you do become a hardcore birdo and come into money, you'll probably want to invest in a really nice pair just to show off.
Spotting scopes/tripods
Spotting scopes were originally used by hunters to get a better look at deer and bears before they shot the poor animal. But they are also very useful for certain types of birding. If you're going to be spending a lot of time looking out over water at waterfowl or waders, you'll want a spotting scope. Scopes sit upon tripods and a provide a sturdy, extra-magnified view which you can pan along and scan area. Watching a flock of a few thousand waders standing on the shoreline from a cliff is near on impossible with binoculars. You don't have enough magnification to ID anything and your arms will shake and you won't see anything well. Most scopes provide between 20x and 40x magnification - but the more you magnify, the harder it will be to get a focussed image. And on a good tripod they are steady, so you can get a good look at that distant bird. Tripods also vary from cheap, lightweight versions, which are great for carrying around but not good in windy conditions, to heavyweight things that won't budge in a hurricane. I currently have a lightweight tripod, but would like to invest in something more sturdy soon.
Field guides
While there are many books about birds, if you're specifically going out birdwatching and want to identify what you see you need a field guide. Field guides list all the birds found in a specified area and should also tell you about their distinguishing features, what envirionment you'll find the bird in, and it's distribution (usually in the form of a map with coloured in areas). They might also give birding tips, and tell you about the bird calls (which is honestly really awkward and subjective when transating a bird call to writing) and maybe about their nests and eggs.
You'll find beginner and photographic field guides around. Beginner guides won't list every bird you might possibly see and photo guides often don't have photos of every species and some of the photos are not very good, it's also unlikely there will be a photo for all plumages (male, female, juvenille, non-breeding, breeding etc). I recommend spending a few dollars more (or sometimes you'll pay the same price) and get a field guide that covers all of Australia. Australia has around 800 species of birds, and these all fit nicely into one book.
Of the non-photographic, Australia-wide field guides, there are only four that matter:
Morcombe - My personal favourite. Michael Morcombe is a Mandurah boy and I've actually met him a couple of times on birdwalks. He does all his own artwork and I just like the layout of his field guides the most. He has colour coded maps, features are pointed out on the actual birds (rather than writing beside the picture) and he attempts to describe calls. He also has a compact guide out which I highly recommend for putting in your daypack and taking with you anywhere you might see birds.
Pizzey & Knight - Probably the most highly regarded of the field guides (Pizzey did the words and Knight does the pictures - Graham Pizzey died a few years back though). This guide is jam-packed with info and the pictures are more photorealistic. I'm not a massive fan of the text on one page and the pictures on another - but at least the correct text is RIGHT beside the correct picture, and the pictures have the birds names on them.
Simpson & Day - Another author/illustrator pairing and the field guide I started out on. Simpson & Day has a plastic wipe-down cover with to scale pictures of beaks of pelagic birds. The idea is if you find a beach-washed specimen, you can put the bill straight on the picture on the cover to try and ID it, and later you can just wipe the sand or blood or whatever right off. Really only useful if you're into pelagics (most birders say waders are hard to learn, waders are EASY compared to pelagic birds). The pictures are nice and the maps are pretty useful, but the pictures have numbers beside the birds and you have to match the numbers with the names on the text side and it's just a slower process, which is not useful when you quickly want to find out what a bird is before it flies away.
Slater - The only field guide I don't own because I think it sucks. Many birders like it because it's half the size of the other guides and easier to lug around, but now Morcombe has released his compact guide it pales in comparison. Despite new editions coming out the information is outdated and innacurate, and he uses names which haven't been used in years. Often the text doesn't match up with the pictures and the maps are just black and white and not at all detailed. Bleh, spend your money on a better guide.
Other things you may want/need
Notepad and pen - to note down what you see. To draw what you see if you're artistically inclined (sometimes a drawing helps with IDing later on). To write poetry, ransom notes, shopping lists, whatever.
A bottle of water and something to nibble on - more or less depending on where you are how long you're going to be.
A raincoat - handy for protecting equipment if not yourself.
A camera - photographing anything but big, tame birds is an almost impossible mission for the regular happy snap photo taker. But if you're serious about photography, birds are beautiful and challenging subjects.
What to wear
Something drab, khakis, browns, stuff that will help you blend in. Bright colours and stark white will make you stand out and startle birds, which makes them fly away, which makes them harder to see. If you're doing some serious traipsing in the bush make sure you have sturdy boots and long pants/long sleeves as required. The Aussie bush is prickly and filled with ticks.
A hat and sunscreen are also a good idea.
Where and when to bird
People say the best birding is in the morning or in the evening. I don't find this to be the case. Depending on the location and the birds any time of day can be good. I've been birding at the "ideal" times and hardly seen anything, but one of my lunch breaks at Herdsman Lake yielded 10 species of ducks. One thing to consider is the sun though, don't walk into the sun, it will make things impossible to see. And it's also hottest/most risk of skin cancer when the sun is out in force.
The Swan Coastal Plain has a very obliging chain of lakes running down it, most of which have awesome waterfowl birding opportunities. Herdsman Lake and Lake Monger are the best in my opinion, but Lake Joondalup and Bibra Lake are also great for beginners.
The great thing about birds is that they are everywhere. I find I'm always birdwatching. On the drive to work I'll be mentally noting, "Corella, Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, hrm haven't seen one of them in a while, Magpie, oh look Pacific Black Duck in drain there, Australian White Ibis flying over..." etc. Any garden or bit of bushland is good for birdwatching. The more natives in an area the better - this will give you a greater variety of birds.
What to do
Birds are flighty creatures (ahem, excuse the lame pun). Approach them slowly and quietly and use your binoculars to view them rather than getting too close. Listen for calls. I've made a point of learning calls, because it's so much easier to identify a bush bird by call and then know what you're looking for rather than just looking by itself.
Most birders keep lists of the birds they have seen. Life lists (all the birds you have seen in your lifetime), area lists, yearly lists, seasonal lists, daily lists (I keep these). Heck, some people even record birds they ID the call of during the cricket on TV! Or you don't have to list at all. Whatever you like! Some birders prefer to just sit and look closely at a bird, be it rare or common while some are chronic tickers, straight onto the next bird once they have ticked off a species. For me birding appeals to my need to collect something, but I find it worthwhile because records of birds provide important information about the health of the environment, as well as giving me something to do whenever I'm outdoors and giving me an excuse to travel. You may prefer to watch birds because you think they're beautiful and want to paint them later, or because you're intruged by the physics of flight. There are no rules to birding (although some birdos would have you believe otherwise). Just enjoy yourself!
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 08:00 am (UTC)Even as an experienced birder, it was a very interesting read. Can't wait for Part Two!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-17 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 08:02 am (UTC)Keep an eye out for one soon though!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 12:49 pm (UTC)what a great job you did too!
very interesting...
no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 04:03 pm (UTC)On the topic of cameras...
Date: 2009-05-16 04:16 pm (UTC)A low-end bridge camera, with a 10-15x optical zoom, however, will do very nicely for birding photos, without breaking the bank.
And books...
Date: 2009-05-16 05:13 pm (UTC)One of the most notable is the rather prosaically titled "Which Bird of Prey is that? A Field Guide to the Identification of Australian Birds of Prey" by Gordon Beruldsen. This uses the unusual approach of treating raptor identification much like aircraft identification, using silhouettes and under-wing patterns to ID birds of prey in flight. Rather dated in the distribution stakes, but very good for identification in the field.
There are a number of similar volumes for other specialities.
Re: And books...
Date: 2009-05-16 09:28 pm (UTC)I think it went out of print quite a few years back, but it was very good.
Re: And books...
Date: 2009-05-17 12:04 am (UTC)We have a couple of copies, and just keep an extract in the car for quick reference.