Few birds were about this morning as I walked the trails at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, which made a surprise discovery all the more enjoyable. I’d seen a couple of wedges of Canada geese but little else as I reached the woods half a mile up the trail from the parking lot.
I had a flicker of hope that I might spot an owl tucked into the cedars at the old AT&T Building One site. Park rangers have cordoned that area off with metal barriers, a good sign that either long-eared owls have returned or will do so soon.
I walked around the fenced area and saw nary a bird, let alone an owl. I had not even raised my camera to take a photo, and I turned back toward my car. Just before I reached the edge of the woods, I spotted a bird fly into a tree to my left.
Downy woodpecker was my guess, but then I saw the bird’s long, pointy beak and exultantly decided, hairy woodpecker. The bird was working its way around the tree trunk, affording me fleeting looks at its backside. I moved back and forth to try to get a better look as the bird pecked away. It recoiled just enough for me to get a couple of shots of its head.
One of the cedar wawwings, basking in the sun.
As I walked into the clear, I spotted two birds perched high up in a tree.. They were cedar waxwings, and I took a few shots through the branches, not expecting much.
But the sun was shining and lit the bird nicely, as I discovered when I got the frames on screen at home. I uploaded photos of one of the waxwings and the putative hairy woodpecker to e-Bird, and that’s when I got my surprise.
Merlin flagged the “woodpecker” images as wrongly placed — they showed a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Only twice before had I recorded a sapsucker at the Pole Farm.
E-bird’s photo recognition capabilities are new, at least in my experience. I’ve been corrected a couple of times in the last several weeks and delighted with that. I want to get my IDs right. It’s even better when the bird is one I don’t often see. 🦅
Another shot of the sapsucker. Note how closely its breast feathers resemble the tree bark.
If you’re interested in becoming a birder, you’re probably wondering what gear you might need. In this post, I’ll offer some advice based on my experience. I aim to keep expenses reasonable and minimal.
For starters, all you need to do is look out the window of your home to see what birds show up. Or take a walk in a neighborhood park and make a note — mental, on paper or on a cell phone — of what you see.
It helps to have a guide book to consult when you spot an unfamiliar bird. I rely on two of the most popular, the Sibley and Peterson field guides, as well as a few other specialty books I’ve accumulated. You can also describe the bird in a search engine or AI query, and chances are good you’ll get a an answer with photos.
Looking about and consulting a guide book is what I’d call Stage One birding. To advance to the next step, I recommend two items. First is the Merlin birding app from the Cornell ornithology lab. It’s free and amazing. You turn it on to listen for birds and are alerted with IDs on whatever it hears. You can also answer a few prompts for characteristics of a bird you see, and the app will suggest what it might be.
Note that the app’s sound recognition ability is not perfect. Using it over time, you’ll know when to be skeptical and when to accept its reports, which is most of the time.
Essential tool: Binoculars
Second is a pair of binoculars, and here’s where budget considerations start coming in to play. My best advice is to buy what you can afford but don’t go super cheap. Many websites offer advice on the best bins for birding, and the most helpful sites and blogs are those that present choices in tiers of prices and capabilities.
My Nikon Monarch bins. 8 x 42 field of view is the most common among birders.
I spent around $300 on Nikon Monarch M5 8 x 42 binoculars, a solid all-around choice. They offer excellent range and color definition, and they do well in a wide range of lighting conditions. There are more pricey models from Zeiss, Swarovski and other manufacturers, and there are lower-priced brands that give good value. You might even be able to pick up a used pair.
Birding organizations often have promotional days when you can examine and buy binoculars from multiple makers, often with a discount. That’s a great way to not only see the products but also to get guidance from experts on site.
Logging your sightings
Once you get the hang of identifying the birds you observe, you likely will want to start keeping a list. I started by using the Notes app on my iPhone to keep a list of the species I spotted around our home.
When I began heading out to the fields and woods, I started using the e-Bird app to track the birds I’d see. I’m an inveterate list maker, recording every car I’ve owned and every flight leg I’ve flown. The e-Bird app tracks how far you’ve traveled and even makes a map of your route. I’m also a map lover, and the web version of e-Bird displays your birding adventures on several levels, from a county to the world.
Here’s my e-Bird map of my birding in the United States, as of early December 2025.
Need a scope?
Spotting scopes are a useful tool for catching birds at a distance, such as gulls floating offshore at a lake or waterbirds on a spit or island far off from where you’re standing on the beach. As with binoculars, scopes range in capabilities and price, and they need tripods.
I haven’t plunked down money for a scope (yet), in part because a birding friend has one that we use if we head to the New Jersey shore. Besides, many birders with scopes that you’ll encounter will happily invite you to take a look at whatever they’ve spotted. A friendly “hello, what are you seeing?” approach usually does the trick.
Overall, binoculars are much more useful in most birding situations than spotting scopes. For most people, binoculars should be the first purchase. With experience, you may reach a point where a spotting scope becomes a compelling need.
What about a camera?
I was an enthusiastic amateur photographer long before I became a birder. When I started birding, I bought binoculars right away and almost immediately began slinging my camera over my shoulder on my outings.
At the time, I had a Canon Rebel XTi, a fairly low-end DSLR onto which I mounted a Canon 75-300 mm zoom lens that I’d bought second hand. I got many nice shots of birds, a few of them up close and a lot of wider “birds in their surroundings” images.
Seeing other photographers with long lenses, I developed lens envy and started plotting how to get one with longer reach. A colleague at work bought a Sigma 150-600 mm Contemporary zoom lens and showed me some of his bird photos, and that became the object of my desire.
A year or so later, I was out at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm with a few other birders pointing their long lenses at a raptor up in a tree. They were getting close-in photos while I snapped a few landscape-like shots with my smaller lens. That afternoon, I went to the camera store, plunked down my credit card and bought the Sigma. I’ve not looked back.
Many birders I know have the same lens, some with Nikons and others with Canons like mine. If I were a rich man, I’d likely buy a 500 mm Canon prime lens, but I’m happy to shoot with my Sigma. It gives me excellent images. It can’t compete with a prime lens in low light, but I’m not often birding in such conditions.
A zoom lens like my Sigma affords a good range of composition options. Sometimes you want to narrow in on the bird and other times you want to pull back to get more of the bird’s surroundings.
As with binoculars, my lens choice was at the sweet spot between capability and affordability.
I’ve upgraded my camera body twice in recent years. I ordered a Canon SL2 to succeed the XTi. When the SL2 conked out, I ordered a mirrorless Canon R7, with which I am very happy. It has excellent video capabilities, but I rarely give that a try. With the long Sigma zoom attached, I need a tripod — which I don’t have — to keep the camera steady.
One of my birding buddies who’s an excellent photographer uses not a DSLR but a Nikon super-zoom camera for both still photos and video. He gets good results in both formats and doesn’t use a tripod. That type of camera is an excellent option and a good value.
If you don’t have the money or interest in getting a high-end camera, you can still take good photos and video with a cell phone. Zoom capabilities are limited, but you can get scenic shots of birds at a nearby feeder, in bushes or in trees. That may satisfy you. If you get hooked on birding, you may get bitten by the camera-and-lens bug.
Jpeg or RAW?
For the first couple of years of serious birding, I shot jpeg photos, not wanting to fuss with the more elaborate controls of advanced photo editing software.
About the time I upgraded to the Canon SL2, I tried shooting in RAW mode and editing the images in Adobe Lightroom. Just by using Lightroom’s auto edit function alone, I immediately saw the advantages of shooting RAW. Lightroom allowed me to lighten shadows and otherwise salvage images that were blown out or dark and muddy.
I’m still learning Lightroom, which now offers AI tools to improve photos at the click of a box. I have a light touch with the editing functions, striving to get a realistic representation of what I saw in the field.
As noted at the top of this post, you can enjoy birding with or without gear. For some, exercise is the main motivator for getting outdoors, and spotting birds and other wildlife is a bonus, no photos required or desired.
For me, photography is essential to my enjoyment. It’s a creative outlet and a critical contributor in my ability to identify birds. Often in the field, I’ll encounter a bird I don’t recognize. Back home, I’ll usually be able to make the ID by looking at the photo.
All the above is my basic advice on getting started and advancing in birding. I’ve been fortunate to get many tips from fellow birders, most of whom are more than happy to share what they know. This post is my way of paying that back. 🦅
Cooped up at home for a couple of weeks after knee surgery, I’ve managed birding only by looking out the windows at home. I got a surprise yesterday when a Northern flicker parked on the suet feeder long enough for me to get my camera and take a few photos.
Flickers visit our yard with fair frequency, usually plucking in the grass or pecking the bark at the base of trees. What was surprising about this visit was that the bird clung to the feeder, something I can’t recall seeing previously.
As on most days, a host of house sparrows were pigging out at the suet feeder and the tube feeder. Through a window, I looked on the ground below the tube feeder and was pleased to see a white-throated sparrow grazing on the seeds that the house sparrows had slopped into the grass.
The white-throated sparrow foraging for feed.
Blue jays, Carolina wrens, American crows, mourning doves and common grackles have stopped by the last few weeks. I’ve even spotted a couple of red-winged blackbirds and a single Eastern bluebird, both species of which come by only occasionally.
Thanks to thrice-a-week physical therapy sessions, I’m recovering quickly from the surgery and expect to get out into the fields again within the next week or two. Meantime, I’m grateful for the birds that come calling at home. It’s also great therapy. 🦅
My heart belongs to the chickadee. Black-capped or Carolina, I have no preference. Whichever of those perky, petite birds comes into range, I am in thrall and in love.
[Note: This is a repost of the original post from Nov. 8, which I accidentally deleted.]
This morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I took an uncharacteristically slow and short walk, needing to get back home in time to consult with our tree guy. The highlight of the morning, up and down the trail, was an abundance of chickadees zipping about the tree branches at the entrance to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm woods.
On my way up the trail toward the old AT&T Building One site, I spotted several chickadees frolicking in the trees. Try as I might, I could not lock my camera on to one of the Carolinas zipping from branch to branch overhead.
The Building One oval had little activity, so I turned back to head to my car and home. But I had to stop again near the edge of the woods, as the chickadees were again out in force.
I managed to get just two in-focus frames of one of the birds, a black-capped as it turned out by virtue of its buffy sides, in a color scheme similar to what the Jersey Blues troops wore in the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain.
I make no apologies for my admiration of chickadees, who pack more personality into a small frame than just about any bird I know. In my part of New Jersey, we’re in a crossover zone where the black-cappeds and Carolinas share the same air and tree space.
At home, we had to take down a pair of dying maples and a black cherry tree a few years back. Our tree service contractor is going to replace them with an “Autumn blaze” maple and a redbud variety, which I hope will provide habitat for birds. If chickadees happen to be the species that settles in them, no one will be happier than I. 🦅
‘Tis the season for huge flocks of common grackles to fill the sky and, in recent days, descend into the front and back yards of our home. A quick Google search revealed that groups of the stolid black birds with iridescent purple heads can be called a flock or, more pointedly, a plague or an annoyance.
On a recent morning at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm, I watched in awe as at least 200 grackles flew overhead in a long, sinuous column. I figured it wouldn’t be long before a swarm would find our property.
Twice in the last three days, I’ve looked out our back windows to find grackles covering our yard and attacking the suet feeder. Often, five or six of them will slam into one another as they fight for morsels from the cage.
Three grackles set upon our suet feeder in 2024.
The birds will stay for a few minutes and then, spooked by who knows what, take off en masse and land in a neighbor’s yard or on the adjoining golf course.
The flocks are impressive, if a bit intimidating, like a black-jacketed motorcyle gang showing up at a block party.
The grackles chow down heartily on our suet, but I don’t begrudge them the treat. In our yard, whatever food I set out for our feathered friends is available to all as their diets demand, table manners not required. 🦅
The other day I was telling a fellow birder that I’ve been wondering why I hadn’t seen many seagulls where I normally see them, such as at Colonial Lake. It also includes the Lawrence Shopping Center on the opposite side of Business Route 1, where ring-billed gulls often hover over the parking lot, looking for pizza crusts or other treats that we humans drop onto the pavement.
I did see a good number of herring gulls recently at Abbott Marshlands in Trenton, the first notable activity I’d seen in months.
Things changed today when I went to the Millstone River Impoundment in Princeton. As soon as I got out of my car, I spotted several gulls flying overhead. They were ring-billed gulls, I soon determined as I looked through my binoculars at half a dozen of them bobbing on Lake Carnegie.
One of the gulls was standing on the railing of the wooden bridge that leads pedestrians over the waters at the edge of the lake and the Delaware and Raritan Canal. The gull was on the far side of the bridge, and I took a few shots from two spots as I crossed the bridge. Every other time I crossed that bridge with a gull parked on the railing, the birds always took off as I came closer.
The gull on the bridge, its portrait taken when I was roughly 20 feet from it.
This time, the bird was amazingly calm. I passed by it, saying softly: “It’s OK. No need to go.” And so it stayed as I walked on.
The other highlight from the visit was a red-bellied woodpecker that was squawking repeatedly above me as I walked on the canal towpath. I finally spotted him in a bare tree that had several cavities in its trunk.
I took several shots, then realized I didn’t have the bird’s beak clear of the trunk. I took a couple of steps to my right to get the full bird. The sunlight illuminated the bird well, and the trunk and branches made for dramatic framing. 🦅
With the thermometer at 30 degrees this morning, we had our first frost of the fall. It turned out to be a decent day for birding. I hadn’t been to the Reed-Bryan Farm side of Mercer Meadows for a while and decided to go there rather than to the Pole Farm side of the park.
Cooper’s hawk in the morning sun.
The biggest bird surprise and the best photo opportunity came as I was heading up the trail to return to my car. About 40 feet in front of me, a Cooper’s hawk was sitting out in the open atop a tree branch at the edge of the path.
I snapped a couple of shots, marveling at how close I was to the bird. It flew off once I took a few steps to try to get a slightly better angle, but no matter. The photos did the bird justice, showing its gleaming yellow eye and some nice detail on its feathers.
I was grateful that the sun was shining fully at that point. It was still coming up over the horizon when I arrived. As usual, I spotted several sparrows crossing the trail and feeding along the edges. But the birds were in heavy shadow, so it was hard to tell the song sparrows from the Savannah sparrows.
A Savannah sparrow forages on the frosty grass beside the trail.
Merlin was also hearing swamp sparrows, and I eventually got a firm ID on one farther along. Through my binoculars, I could see one tucked in the tall grasses. I pulled up my camera and managed to get focus lock for a couple of clear shots.
Swamp sparrow lurking in the grasses.
Only a few weeks ago, I was birding in shorts and a T-shirt, but as the temperature has begun to drop I’m clad in jeans and a jacket. It won’t belong before I break out the gloves and maybe smack a few hand warmers for the cold days ahead.
I don’t mind the cold, as long as the birds keep coming! 🦅
I’ve only birded casually in New York City, mainly in Central Park. It’s almost impossible to walk in the Big Apple without encountering a rock dove (or 200).
As for bluebirds, I’d love to see one in the big city, but I figure I’m much more likely to find one in the rural parts of the state.
As many times as I’ve seen pigeons in New York, I can’t find any photos that I’ve taken of them. That’s why there’s a freebie at the top of this post from the Pexels package WordPress offers its users.
While I’m not as big a fan of pigeons as Bert is on Sesame Street, I do hope to snap a few photos of them one of these days. 🦅
Over the weekend, I spent two mornings at Mercer Meadows with friends, human and avian. While I’m still awaiting the arrival of more Northern harriers, I’m pleased to report that the Savannah sparrows have been arriving steadily.
My friend Sally had mentioned that she’d love to see an Eastern meadowlark at the Pole Farm. Since I’d been hearing them the past week, I invited her join me this morning.
On our way up the trail, Merlin heard a couple, but I could not pick out their calls. Little more than an hour later, we had made it back to the parking lot when we heard them calling nearby. We took a short stroll to one of the nearby fields and were thrilled to see a few, including one that flew toward us.
I was too busy looking to get a photo, but the image of its brilliant yellow breast gleaming in the sunshine is burned into memory.
Song and Savannah sparrows were seemingly everywhere in the fields and on the central dirt path. Again, I must note how lovely they – especially the Savannahs – appear against a backdrop of the reds and oranges and tans of autumn foliage.
A Savannah sparrow perches amid red leaves in warm morning light.
We spotted cedar waxwings high up in trees at the AT&T Building One site, and I spotted a field sparrow up high as well.
A field sparrow strikes a cute pose on a tree branch.
We enjoyed hearing many white-throated sparrows singing their bright, whistling song in the woods, and we also spotted a few dark-eyed juncos.
Another highlight of the weekend came Saturday morning when I got a brief glimpse of a red-breasted nuthatch in the woods. Again, no photo, but seeing that uncommon caller was treat enough. 🦅
A dark-eyed junco gazes into the distance from the knuckle of a tree branch on Saturday.
It was a comical scene at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm: my birding buddies Lee, Jim and I we’re standing in front of a section of trees and bushes, watching a ruby-crowned kinglet flit from branch to branch.
Each of is a well-experienced birder and photographer, and we were all bemoaning how quickly the kinglet — just a few yards in front of us — zipped off each time one of us tried to focus. I don’t think any of us got a single shot of the bird, which we spotted at the old AT&T Building One site.
Park managers put in a metal fence at the spot a year or two ago, the kind with rectangular openings on which birds will sometime perch. More often, the fence wires drive our autofocus cameras bonkers as we try to thread a shot through the openings only a few inches wide and tall.
Lee, Jim and I walked a big loop around the park and encountered another birding friend, Michael, near the same spot where we’d been thwarted by the mercurial kinglet. What did Michael say? How hard it is to focus on kinglets through that darn metal fence.
Exactly.
Maybe that’s when the Birding Gods of Irony decided to have their fun with us. We walked out of the woods and started down the central path toward the parking lot when I spotted a small bird at about eye-level on a small tree.
“What is this little guy?” I asked, bringing up my camera to focus on the bird seemingly entwining itself with one of the branches. The bird was in shadow, and I had time to take a few shots, noting that I’d have to figure out the ID when I brought the images up on screen.
When I did so, my first thought was it was a goldfinch, and I amended my e-Bird report, bringing the day’s species count up to 30.
But something about the eye-ring on the bird made me wonder, and I put the photo into Merlin to check myself. Merlin’s answer: ruby crowned kinglet!
I laughed aloud. This one bird of a species almost always so difficult to capture had stayed on a single branch for at least 30 seconds, allowing me to take several shots.
The bird didn’t show its ruby crown, but that’s not unusual. I’ve luckily gotten other shots showing the ruby crown, and on this day I was plenty pleased to get what I got. 🦅
The Jersey Birder 