Birding with Descriptive Placeholders

Greetings from the world's most ill-informed birdwatcher: I don't know the names of many birds beyond kavva and kabootar.

I find my way around by giving them descriptive names, such as 'that bird with red buttocks that eats the guavas before they ripen' or 'that shiny small black bird with hologram like skin that eats something from that white-flowered tree in the adjoining plot'. The rickshaw-walla cum guide at Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary finally enlightened me that the first is a bulbul. The second I still do not know.

Once you know the name of the bird, you can quickly find out else. So, now I know that there are two different types of bulbul in my garden. One has a red posterior but is otherwise dull in color. The other has thick black streaks coming down the neck from both sides like shawls of South Indian politicians, white chest, red patches a little below the eyes, apart from the red color below. The first is the red - vented bulbul. The second is the red - whiskered bulbul.

Of course, it is only once in a while that you find out the name of a bird. Till then, one can make do with descriptive names  such as 'that black bird with white stripes on both sides'.

Google may sometimes help you identify the bird. For example, I recently saw at Garhpanchkot, a black bird with a forked tail. It would sit on the wire - mesh on the boundary wall, and catch insects on the fly. I stated all this on Google, and voila, it is the Black Drongo.

However, such easy identification is rare. Info available online is not of much use in initial identification: you have just seen the bird for a fleeting moment, you have no idea how many eggs it lays, how it feeds its kids, whether it is endemic (local) or migrating from Siberia. So make do with descriptive placeholders, such as 'that slightly big white bird that flies patiently, like a seasoned marathon runner'. For convenience, give it a smaller label like 'white bird'. That should do till you find better labels like 'cattle egret'.