ae ILLINOIS AUDUBON BULLETIN 
SOME GENERAL PROBLEMS OF FIELD 
IDENTIFICATION 
by LAWRENCE G. BALCH 
Somehow, somewhere, it was decided by someone that I should contribute 
to this publication several articles on specific field identification problems. The 
articles would hopefully interest those who wanted to become better birders by 
giving them useful information not available in the field guides. I began to 
consider what the first article should be about — loons, peeps, accipiters. . . 
but finally decided that it would be best to begin with an article about general 
problems of observation (and therefore of identification as well) because I believe 
that good field identification depends less on an encyclopedic knowledge of field 
marks than on developing a critical attitude and on experience. 
It seems to me that most, if not all, field identification problems can be 
related to three factors: lack of knowledge, observational factors, and psycho- 
logical influences. Any birder can minimize (but never entirely eliminate) his 
field identification problems. All that is required is work and an awareness of 
these factors. Let’s look at each of them. 
Knowing What To Look For 
The old saying “‘If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you won’t find it’’ 
doesn’t apply in birding. The less you know about accipiters, for example, the 
easier it is to find a ‘“Cooper’s Hawk’’. I base this statement on the number of 
Cooper’s Hawks reported by beginning birders as compared to those reported by 
more knowledgeable and experienced observers. Long-billed Dowitchers are 
another example; these, birds, too, are more easily found by the less knowl- 
edgeable. And, more than one author has noted (facetiously, of course) how 
many more rarities he saw in his early days of birding. 
Seriously, though, it’s obvious that the more you know, the more accurate 
your identifications will be, and the fewer birds you’ll have to pass over. Nothing 
is more frustrating than discovering, long after the bird has vanished, that what 
you thought was your first-ever LeConte’s Sparrow might have been a Sharp- 
tailed Sparrow, because you didn’t know enough to look for the color of the 
median stripe. 
I assume that anyone who really wants to improve his identification skills 
has already gone through the field guides to learn the distinguishing characteris- 
tics of the species he might see, and those of the species they might be confused 
with. This is a necessary first step in knowing what to look for, but there will still 
