There are many challenges to becoming a birder, particularly if you want to know what everything you are looking at is! In other words, you want to put a name to a face. The problem is that it does take a lot of practice; the good thing is that practice is birding, and that is fun! One major challenge is that we focus so much of field marks that sometimes we do not see the forest for the trees. The real way we identify birds is by looking at them not as parts, but as wholes, not only in pattern and color, but also in the way they move and behave. In addition, we hardly ever focus on one of the most important features on a bird: the face! This workshop begins with getting you to understand how the brain identifies birds–the psychology and brain science behind bird identification. We use that to understand how we can best use our innate skills at recognition to apply this to birding. We also discuss tips and tricks that apply to certain groups of birds and facilitate their identification. We think about techniques that may work to speed up learning birds and also tips on how to get better at bird identification even when you are not out in the field on a birding trip. Your computer can even be a learning tool! This will be a holistic, multi-faceted workshop on bird identification. I guarantee to you that it will not be like any birding how-to classes you have attended before. I am hoping you will come out of it with a brand-new outlook on bird identification, and one that will hopefully take away some of the frustration felt in trying to identify birds yourself!

Alvaro Jaramillo is an internationally known ornithologist and expert. Alvaro has a B.S. in Zoology and an M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Toronto, and also conducted research at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. An expert on the birds of California and North America, he wrote the American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of California and New World Blackbirds. He is also an authority on the birds of Chile, authoring Birds of Chile (2003), collaborating on Chile’s Important Bird Areas program, and helping to identify a new bird species there, Oceanites pincoyae (Pincoya Storm-Petrel). An author and contributor to numerous field guides and popular publications, Alvaro’s passion is not only to understand the biology and natural history of birds, but to enrich other’s enjoyment of birds and further avian conservation and he leads birding trips throughout the world with his company, Alvaro’s Adventures.