JACKSON — The brown bird at your feeder isn’t necessarily a sparrow.
It could be a brown thrasher or a female cardinal, and learning to tell the difference is roughly where a lot of Mississippi “birders” begin: at the back porch feeder finally looking at the birds that have been living on the porch for years.
Getting started as a bird watcher takes less than most people assume. The National Audubon Society, which publishes primers for new birders, says the only real requirements are a field guide, a weatherproof notebook and a willingness to pay attention. Binoculars help but aren’t mandatory. When people do buy a pair, Audubon recommends saving up for the $120 to $180 range, where the optics are good enough to sharpen the view rather than muddy it.
Much of the rest is free. The Merlin Bird ID app, built by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, will identify a bird from a photo or a snatch of song and hand back a short list of likely suspects. The lab’s All About Birds website carries range maps, calls and life histories for hundreds of North American species. Log what you see on eBird or iNaturalist and, as the U.S. Forest Service notes in its own how-to guide, your Tuesday-morning walk quietly becomes part of a national data set that working scientists actually use.
Mississippi makes the “where” part easy. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks maintains the Interstate 55 Corridor Birding Trail, a string of eight state parks running the length of the state from Sardis down to McComb. The list runs John W. Kyle at Sardis, Wall Doxey near Holly Springs, George P. Cossar at Oakland, Hugh White at Belden, Holmes County at Durant, LeFleur’s Bluff in Jackson, Lake Lincoln near Wesson and Percy Quin at McComb.
The parks’ published checklists are substantial. LeFleur’s Bluff, off the Lakeland Drive exit in Jackson and home to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, lists roughly 150 possible species, from wood ducks and summer tanagers to the pileated woodpecker, a crow-sized bird with a flame-red crest and a laugh you hear before you see it. John Kyle and Wall Doxey run longer still.
Experienced birders say a little planning goes a long way. Audubon’s guidance is mostly common sense: tell someone your route, charge your phone, pack water, and watch your feet, because it’s easy to trip over something while your eyes are in the treetops.
Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab, tells Audubon he tucks his pants into his socks in tick country and keeps track of when gated parks close. Fellow birder Alice Deutsch, a former president of the Linnaean Society of New York, tells the group there’s safety and better sightings in numbers.
“That’s how you see the birds,” Deutsch said.
There’s an etiquette, too, and the Forest Service is blunt about it. Stay on established trails so you don’t trample habitat. Keep your distance from nests and feeding birds and let the binoculars or the zoom lens close the gap. Don’t bait or lure. The birds are at home, and the birder is the guest.
None of it requires a trip. Audubon is emphatic that the yard counts. You’ve got a noisy hedge by the mailbox, some pines at the back of the lot, and the birds you see there are almost better than the ones you travel for… because they’re practically yours.
Which brings it back to the feeder, and the brown bird. She has a crest, a stout orange beak and a wash of red at the wings and tail. A little research, and you can put her on your list. That’s the fun of it.
For more about bird watching in Mississippi, visit mdwfp.com.
