Draw a twig. Birds fly constantly and find new areas to explore. Our drawing is depicted on a branch on which a small bird proudly looks into the distance. You can draw the branch as you like. You can make a branch with leaves. We are glad if you succeed.
What’s the best book or field guide for bird identification?
A good field guide is one of the most important tools to help identify birds. Traditionally, field guides took the form of books, often quite big books, that for field use could be heavy or vulnerable to wetting on rainy days. Nowadays there are also some great smartphone apps as well, making bird ID fit into the palm of your hand. Many people rely on both books and apps to identify birds; below are some of our favorite guides for North America.
Printed Guides
Books
With many great field guides out there, the “best” bird identification book is often a matter of opinion. To find your favorite, start by browsing field guides at a library or bookstore. Look up four or five familiar birds: which guide portrays these birds closest to the way you see them? Is the book comfortable to use? Are the birds easy to find?
Look for a field guide with drawings rather than photographs. Artists portray birds in similar poses, using their experience and knowledge to make it easier for you to key in on the important field marks. With photographs, lighting conditions and differences in postures can obscure important features or highlight unimportant ones.
Size is also a factor: if your book is too large, you won’t want to carry it in the field, but if it’s too small, it may not include all the likely birds in your area. Start with a guide that shows all the birds of North America or at least all the birds of the East or the West. You might find that a state-level guides (or other regional guide) is helpful and handy for most of the birds you run across—but keep a more thorough guide to turn to for those unusual sightings you’re sure to find eventually.
These are some of the guides we recommend:
- The Sibley Guide to Birds focuses on plumage, is very detailed, and includes excellent drawings of birds in different plumages. Because it provides so much detail, fewer species are shown per page, making comparisons a bit more difficult. The original is large and heavy, so check out The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America and The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern NorthAmerica. They are equally complete (for their regions) and far more portable.
- The Peterson Guide to Birds of North America is a classic guide that includes the birds of Hawaii. If you are looking for something with a more narrow geographic focus, check out The Peterson Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America or The Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. Covering just half the continent, these classic guides help you narrow down your choices to the birds where you live. One minor drawback is that the range maps are all in the back of the book—be sure to check range maps before settling on an ID.
- The Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America. This field guide was specifically designed for beginning birders. It uses photographs of birds, but with a layout more typical of field guides using paintings, allowing easy comparison of related species.
- The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds takes a novel approach to illustration: embedding multiple photographs in a single landscape photo to create impressions of how birds are actually seen at multiple distances and in a variety of plumages.
- The Golden Guide’s Birds of North America, is extremely portable and accessible for beginners.
- National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America is very popular and accessible, but a bit large. The illustrations were done by a variety of artists, so there isn’t the single style found in the Peterson, Sibley, or Golden guides.
All About Birds Regional Field-Guide Series
This series of slim, pocket-sized guides present information and photos from our All About Birds website for about 200 species in each of seven North American regions: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, California, and Texas & Oklahoma. They include four ID photos per species, including male, female, breeding, and nonbreeding plumages, updated range maps, and a visual index to quickly get you to the right page. There’s also an in-depth front section on how get started as a new birdwatcher and how to attract birds to your yard.
Folding Guides
Folding guides break down bird identification into regional areas, placing illustrations and a minimal amount of text onto a foldable, laminated sheet. The number of featured species is limited, but these small, sturdy guides are easy to carry and stand up to the elements.
- Waterford Press All About Birds Pocket Guides cover a handful of different bird focused topics, including 10 regional guides and three waterfowl ID guides.
- Sibley has 24 regional guides featuring the excellent drawings found in The Sibley Guide to Birds.
Digital Guides
Our All About Birds online bird guide is a great resource with lots of information on more than 630 species of birds from the U.S. and Canada, including photos, sounds, and videos. You can browse birds by family and shape. Each account has a section where the featured bird is compared to similar species, which helps in identification when species look alike.
For comprehensive scientific information on all 10,900+ birds on Earth, a subscription to Birds of the World is more than worth the modest expense.
Apps
Apps are a great resource for bird identification that you can carry in your pocket. Many people like to have a good bird identification book at home, and use an app when they are birdwatching outdoors. Many apps also have bird songs and calls in addition to drawings and photos. Here are a few apps that we like:
- The Cornell Lab’s Merlin Bird ID has an easy-to-use bird ID wizard that can be used all over the world. It asks you a few questions about the bird you have in your sights (color, size, location) and then gives you a few possibilities of what bird you may be seeing. Merlin Bird ID can also identify a bird from a photo and even identify a bird from sound.
- The Sibley Guide to Birds app is another good app to use and covers birds of the U.S. and Canada.
- The Audubon Bird Guide app covers over 800 species of birds in North America. You can share photos on the app and keep up with the latest news about birds—from conservation to outreach opportunities.
How to Draw a Baby Bird
Dear drawing lovers, we suggest you learn how to draw a baby bird. Our team drew a cartoon bird for you to make it much easier for beginners and children to portray the image of a child of a bird. This tutorial is very simple and doesn’t take very much effort to understand.
Birds differ from many other animals in a large number of distinctive body parts. For example, in birds, the respiratory organs are arranged differently. After all, birds during flight feel the air flow in a completely different way. For people, such air currents would be extremely unfavorable, for example, the fact that people jumping with a parachute use different means to protect their face from wind currents. Birds perceive such a strong wind as ordinary and easy. It is interesting that not all birds can fly, these include chickens, penguins, ostriches and even some types of parrots.
To draw this bird, use pencils, markers and paints. If you want to draw a bird from a video game, then try drawing a red bird from a game about Angry Birds. Also you can find drawing lessons of other animals that may interest you. All drawing lessons are easy and comfortable.
The lesson is divided into six parts that show you how to do this. The seventh step shows the already painted bird. We wish you a pleasant drawing!
Time needed: 25 minutes
How to Draw a Baby Bird
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Draw the outline of the bird. The first step is to draw a construction line. This line is drawn to outline the outline of the bird. Start with the head line that is on top, then draw a construction line for the torso and tail.
Draw the beak and eye. In the second step of the bird illustration, you need to draw an outline circle for the eye, over which you need to draw the eyebrow lines. After that draw the outline of the beak and erase the extra line.
Detail the eye and beak. Now we move on to drawing the outline of the pupil. It’s just a circle inside the eye. It should be closer to the edge of the line, as shown in the picture in blue. Now draw a line that will split the beak in two. Draw a line from the tip to the middle of the beak.
Draw a wing. Moving on to drawing the important part for each bird. This is a bird’s wing, which is also very easy to draw. You want to draw a half oval on the inside, and the outside of the wing is a wavy line. Happened? Move on.
Draw the legs of the bird. Draw two small legs for the child’s bird. You can draw four lines, two on each side, to which you will draw the bird’s legs from below.
Draw a twig. Birds fly constantly and find new areas to explore. Our drawing is depicted on a branch on which a small bird proudly looks into the distance. You can draw the branch as you like. You can make a branch with leaves. We are glad if you succeed.
Color your cute little bird. Paint the legs and beak yellow or orange, and the body the color you want. It is not necessary to paint in the same color as shown in the tutorial. Paint the wing of the bird in a different shade of the same color in which you paint the head and torso.
Realistic Illustration of Birds with Imaginative Elements
A course by Ricardo Ales
Teacher Plus
Artist. Portland, United States.
Joined August 2022
Artist.
Portland, United States.
Explore the world of highly detailed drawing with a focus on narrative and meaning with the acclaimed artist, Ricardo Ales, as he shares his expertise and takes you on a journey to create drawings that go beyond mere lines on paper.
In this immersive course, you’ll delve into Ricardo’s background and gain insights into his artistic journey. He will showcase a range of captivating drawings, including his own, to showcase the diversity within the genre of bird drawings.
Through practical demonstrations and step-by-step guidance, you’ll learn to create a stunning drawing of a bird from initial concept to the final piece. Ricardo will lead you through essential stages, from finding reference photos and brainstorming the conceptual aspects of your artwork to creating thumbnail sketches and inking. Along the way, you’ll master valuable inking techniques such as hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling.
As a bonus, Ricardo will also share insights on the importance of developing your craft, maintaining a social media presence, and nurturing discipline and focus to create highly detailed drawings. Immerse yourself in this course and let Ricardo’s expertise inspire you to transform your drawings into captivating works of art.
