How I Identify Birds While Birdwatching

I recently got into birdwatching and bird photography, after realizing it’s a lot like real-life Pokémon. Following that article, I received an email from a reader asking how do you identify birds when you’re out birding. I replied, but thought it’d be worth writing about for others, to see if it sparks anyone else’s interest. For me, it all starts with Merlin Bird ID. As soon as I start birding, I enable the Sound ID feature. It listens to all the sounds around me and identifies potential birds based on my location and the time of the year. For my area, it says it recognizes 60%-75% of the bird sounds. If I come across a bird that’s not making any sounds or is not recognized by Merlin, then I use their Birds Near You list to see if I can cross-reference the bird I’m seeing with any of the likely birds. This is hard for me right now, since the difference between birds can be subtle. For example, the Gray Kingbird and the Puerto Rican Flycatcher look alike, I struggle to differentiate…