Burt Guttman wrote:
>Funny you should mention that! Those who are familiar with my book Finding >Your Wings, or who have attended one of my workshop-talks about how to get >started in birding--I did two of them at the Edmonds birding festival on >Saturday--will know that my birding strategy is threefold, and one leg of >the strategy is to learn categories of birds before (or at least along >with) learning to identify the species within the category.

I'll testify for this strategy, too! When I became serious about
birding, my mentor suggested studying Burt's book as a good way to
begin. And it was for more reasons than this. But as regards this
particular strategy, I can "categorize" every bird I see even if I
cannot remember (or don't know) the species name. And that definitely
makes figuring out the species much easier.

I would certainly recommend the method (and the book, too) without
hesitation.

Darlene
Cinebar