It's right where I'm looking!

or: How to point out the location of a bird

Discussions of birding techniques dwell mainly on finding and identifying birds, as they should, but as soon as you've accomplished one or both of those things, it's essential to be able to direct other people to the bird you are seeing. Unfortunately this aspect of birding skills gets less attention than it deserves, and the discussion pretty much begins and ends with the suggestion to use the "clock" method. Here I've tried to describe some of the basics of pointing out birds, and added a little quiz.

Giving directions well allows everyone to see the birds, more quickly and easily, and makes for a smooth and pleasant birding experience. Giving directions badly leads to missed birds, frustration, and hard feelings. This is a learned skill, and it needs to be practiced.

The essential principles are:

Start with the basics – really basic. Is it flying or sitting? on the ground or in a tree? etc
Find an obvious landmark and use that to get everyone in the ballpark (e.g. "see the burning tires… go left") then get more specific to zero in on the location
Keep giving directions and describing what the bird is doing; bad directions can be frustrating, silence is more so
For a bird in a flock, it's helpful to describe what it's doing – "just flapped" or "preening its belly" or "looking toward us" are all helpful hints.
For a flying bird, please don't say "flying left to right" (my pet peeve). That means it's flying right, and in the urgency of the moment your listeners will be reacting to the words "flying left…" before you can finish saying "…to right"

As the person responsible for directing, you may need to lower your binoculars momentarily to look for landmarks, but try not to lose track of the bird when you do this! One option is to use your binoculars to scan the immediate surroundings of the bird – shift quickly left, then back to the bird, then right, then back to the bird – so you don't lose track of it. If you can spot a landmark such as a colorful leaf or broken branch, that might help people find it. For a flying bird, you can pan ahead of it briefly with your binoculars to see what's coming up, then say, it's almost to the boat/house/tower/etc.

Below are a few photos to practice on. This quiz is partly to test your ability but even more to give some real-world examples of the right and wrong way to describe a bird's location. Each photo shows a scene, with the location of a bird indicated by the orange dot. Your challenge is to choose the best description of the bird's location from the available answers.

Bird Location Quiz



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Question 1 In the white pine, dead centerSee the deepest shadow, with a thin pale tree trunk in it, it's in the tree just left of that, on a branch coming straight towards us about halfway up the treeOn a branch in the middle of the tree. That tree... right... there... [holding binoculars to eyes with one hand, pointing unsteadily with the other] Right in front of me!Question 1 Explanation:If you and you companions can all recognize the white pine, then "In the white pine, dead center" is the best description and you get extra credit for knowing the tree. Give yourself 2300 extra points! I only marked it wrong because I think a lot of people won't know which is the white pine.Question 2 In the big lone tree, about 10 o'clock, a couple of feet in from the tip of the branchIn the round tree, where there's a kind of a dip on the side, just above a big branch on the left, all aloneIt's the tree straight ahead, maybe a pine tree, about 100 feet away, and it's near the tips of the branchesQuestion 3 Flying left to right, high up, passing a tall tree
Flying right, above the treetops, about to go over the pathStraight ahead, right where I'm looking, ooh...quick!
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All doneNeed more practice!Keep trying!Not bad!Good work!Perfect!