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Birdwatching Woes

7/26/26

Now, one of the most troublesome things about birdwatching is that there's a good number of birds that don't look like the birds they're "supposed" to look like. Getting into the hobby initially, hearing "there is a sexism problem in how we categorize bird species" would make me blink in mild disbelief, but it's true. Most guides have more detailed diagrams of male specimens than female and juvenile specimens, more descriptions of male birdsong than female birdsong (to the point where there is a common misconception that female songbirds do not sing- they do!), and sometimes no guide to what a female of the species looks or sounds like, all for the crime of being slightly less eye-catching.

Despite this, looking at a female or juvenile bird is often when I NEED a guide the most. If I am looking at a small, striped passerine that I can tell from physiology is not just your garden variety sparrow, I want to get a ballpark idea of what it is from a guide by paging through. I can make assumptions like "it has a large, thick bill that's probably used for crushing seeds- something related to a cardinal, maybe?" However, once I get to the point where I'm SURE it's a grosbeak, I want to start asking questions like "is this an adult female or is this a juvenile?" and "of the several grosbeak species in the state of New York, which one am I looking at?"

I shouldn't have to go on a whole Google dive (especially with the currently ill-functional state of the search engine. It is very sick.) just to figure that out, but I often have to just because none of my usual references have good guides to anything but distinctive adult males that I can usually identify on sight anyway. I am not going to mistake any other bird for an adult male rose-breasted grosbeak because it's pitch black and snow white and blood red. It Is Very Distinctive.

And yet, here he is (no offense to him personally, of course) gobbling up all the space I wish could be spent on his wife and kids. Female birds aren't somehow "lesser" or "less interesting" just for having better camo going on, and I JUST want more resources.