My First Bird

Years ago, a beer company used the slogan "You always remember your first girl" to advertise their beer.

Well, do you remember your first bird?

Now, I don't mean when you were a baby and some adult said to you, "See the birdie?"

Or, if you were in a park, and a parent said, "Look, there's a robin!"


I'm talking about the first bird that you identified on your own by using a field guide (for us older birders) or an app (for you newer birders).

For me, my first bird is the White-breasted Nuthatch.

It was Friday July 13, 1979 and I was working as the Nature Specialist at the Holiday Hill Day Camp in Prospect, Connecticut.  I had just graduated from the University of Bridgeport, CT and had recently taken a bird identification course so I was a newbie birder.  And one day, near the tennis courts, I noticed this smallish, cigarish-shaped, black-gray-white bird walking head first DOWN a tree!

Here's the description of the bird that I wrote in my field notebook that day:  "looked like a small blue jay; walked down white ash tree." Looking back now, the only thing a white-breasted nuthatch and a blue jay have in common are some of their colors - black and white - but where the blue jay has vivid blue, the nuthatch is a duller blue-gray.

Not knowing where to begin, I took my Peterson Guide to North American Birds: Eastern United State, and skipping the sections on shore birds, looked at every page until I found a match!  At that time, I had no idea to look under the Passerine (perching birds) section.

The white-breasted nuthatch also has a distinctive call - a nasally 'hank, hank', as some have described it.  To hear its call (and to find out more about birds), go to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology  at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478

Red-breasted nuthatch

As an aside, a close relative to the white-breasted is the red-breasted nuthatch.  As the name implies, the red-breasted has a buff/brownish/rust colored breast and is much smaller.  Found mainly north of Connecticut, there has been irruptions of them in the winter when northern food supplies are low.

So, what is your first bird?