THE FALL bird migration is under way, and that means the cast of characters we’re seeing and hearing in the garden is changing quickly, as we say goodbye for now to some species, and keep a close eye out for any southbound travelers who may stop in for a short visit.

I love to watch for signs of both—and can’t imagine a day that doesn’t involve watching birds at least a little. That’s why I was happy to learn about a fun new book about bird-watching basics by the editors of  “BWD Magazine” that ventures into related topics, too….like how to make your garden attractive to more birds.

I set out decades ago to make a garden for the birds, and it’s hard to remember a day since that hasn’t involved some degree of engagement with both parts of the picture—plants and birds. Including lots and lots and lots of bird watching.

Today’s guests are Jessica Vaughan and Julie Zickefoose—both of whom are editors at “BWD Magazine” (formerly “Bird Watchers Digest”), and are now, along with their colleague Dawn Hewitt, also the authors of a new edition of the book “Bird Watching for Dummies” (affiliate link).

We talked about bird-feeding best practices, and also what to zero in on to identify birds. (Although sometimes all bets are almost off, like with confusing fall warblers, such as the one above in a gray birch at Julie’s, who turns out to be a Cape May. “How do you even start to identify a bird like this?” she quips.)

Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of the new book.

Read along as you listen to the Sept. 8, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

bird watching, with julie and jessica

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Margaret Roach: Hello, hello. And you’re out in Ohio, visiting each other?

Julie Zickefoose [above]: We are, yeah. This is a fresh-air retreat for Jessica, who lives in Columbus, since we get her down here and just fill her up with whippoorwills and cicadas for a while.

Margaret: So this is the second edition of a book with almost 30 years under its belt.

Julie: Yes. And to say that it needed to be updated is an understatement of the year. It dated to 1997, Margaret. [Laughter.]

Margaret: Oh my. Well, and so that’s a while back. And who was the author then?

Julie: Bill Thompson III, my late husband. But I had written about a third of the book for him. Anything that dealt with gardening, behavior, drawing birds, feeding birds, anything like that that had to do with the backyard interaction with birds I wrote. So I had quite a hand in the book in the beginning, and then it was humbling to read my words and realize how completely out of date they were in every respect. [Laughter.]

Margaret: Right. So by the way, I’ll say to both of you, I love that BWD—it’s the acronym, I guess; well, it’s the name of the magazine, which was “Bird Watchers Digest.” “Bird Watching for Dummies” is BWD. And then in the book, Jessica, I think you explained that it has another meaning of three sort of adjectives that birds bring to mind. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Jessica Vaughan [above]: I do: Birds, wonder and delight. Yes. We toyed around with that as a tagline when we relaunched the magazine and we bring it out every now and then. And it’s funny you mentioned that the book has the same initials because when you said that we both looked at each other like, “Oh, it does?” [Laughter.] It had never occurred to us. It really hadn’t.

Margaret: Well, good thing I read it and told you; good thing. Yeah, beauty, wonder and delight. And really, I mean, for me, that’s what nature is about, but especially birds and really the companionship that they provide for me living in a rural place on my own, both the regulars I’m on a first-name basis with that I sort of count on seeing each year in their own season, and then the unexpected visitors. It’s really an integral part for me of the garden in my life.

And so even though I felt like I had some experience—I am sort of more like maybe an intermediate-level person, and the book is for “dummies”—it was wonderful because it reminded me that we need to sharpen our skills and remember certain things as we watch the birds, especially to emphasize the “watching,” right, not just ticking things off on a list?

Jessica: Absolutely. We really don’t feel that this book is for dummies [laughter]. That is the brand, but there’s something for every birder at every level we think. And that’s the beauty of it, you can start at chapter one, or you can go straight to the gardening chapter. So it’s really designed to give a little something new to everyone who wants to advance in some regard of their bird watching.

Margaret: So I mean, it covers everything from binoculars and how to use them, and the basics of taxonomy, and I mean so many different subjects. So as I said in the introduction, the migration is under way. The fall migration in some ways can be subtle in your own backyard, at least I feel like it can be in my own backyard.

But I was reminded reading the book of some of the basics of bird identification. There’s a lot about how to build your skills, so to speak, and maybe we can talk about that. And yes, we can turn on the Merlin app. And you have an anecdote about that, Julie, in the book, too, about your resistance to using that for a long time and so forth. But I think it’s great to also learn the old-fashioned way to ID birds. Yes?

Jessica: Absolutely.

Julie: Yeah. We really emphasize that to learn it old-school, to actually chase down the bird until you see that song coming out of that beak, is really the way to cement vocalizations in your head. And it’s more fun. It’s all very well and good to have your phone tell you what’s singing out there, but isn’t it much more interesting to sort of pick out a song and track it down and then actually find the bird? That’s birding. That’s what we want people to do.

So we do spend a lot of time talking about the old-school ways of doing things because we do not think that these apps have replaced ear-birding or actually chasing birds down until you can see them

Jessica: At this time of year, the birds aren’t as vocal. So Merlin isn’t going to help you find warblers right now, but the warblers are coming through. So learning bird behavior and those skills are what are going to help you at other times of the year that they’re not singing.

Margaret: And I think that behavior—and there’s a lot about that in the book—I think that’s where a lot of the really good watching comes in.

Julie: Absolutely.

Margaret: Watching their moves, the differences among them where you see a particular type of bird habitat-wise, getting to know them, yes? Not just, “Oh, that’s the little indigo-colored bird.” Do you know what I mean? Where, and what does it do? And anyway, I love all that. The behavior is the exciting part.

Julie: Yeah, I think once you sight a bird, your job has just begun. You shouldn’t just say, “Oh yeah, yellow-rumped warbler. Next!” But if you just stay on it as long as it permits you to, it may do something really interesting that maybe nobody’s ever seen one do before. That’s where I get excited about bird watching, because I like to stay with them and see what they’re up to.

Margaret: Well, and I think in the book you all write something that’s really important. It took me a long time when I was a beginning birder to really remember this. My impulse was if I would see a bird, I would run to get my field guide. [Laughter.] And you know what happened when I got back with the field guide: The bird wasn’t there.

So you say, “Look at the bird, not the field guide.” And then you say something else, sort of a corollary thing: “Talk to yourself.” And those were two really good things, to say out loud what I was seeing. To vocalize it, so it got stuck in my head so that when I did go get the book, I knew what had struck me.

Julie: Right. Exactly. Exactly. You’re trying to take a mental photograph of this thing to hold in your brain until you can get to that book. And the longer you stay on the bird, the more you’re going to notice about it. So really your time is best spent with that bird. It may only give you 20 seconds, you might as well spend those with it.

Margaret: Which things, Jessica—are there things that you, when you’re out bird watching, are there things that you always look for, telltale aspects of a bird? Or do you have sort of what you prioritize?

Jessica: As a beginning birder I would say I always wanted to identify it. It was just important to know what I was looking at. And the more experienced it has become less important to put a name to that bird than to spend time with it and enjoy it.

And I’m at a stage now where most of what I see when I’m out birding, I’m going to know what it is. But I went birding yesterday and I saw a lot of warbler butts, and I don’t know who they belong to [laughter], and that’s O.K. I still enjoyed finding those warbler butts because it was hard to even see so high up and warbler neck is a real phenomenon. And so I think a younger version of me birding would’ve been frustrated by that. But I had no problem. I was still eBirding and I had no problem checking “warbler sp.” [Laughter.] I know that hurts some people.

Margaret: So we should explain what “warbler sp.” is on eBird, because eBird.org is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sort of database, so to speak, that we could participate in and we can register our sightings. And “warbler sp.” is warbler species, when you don’t know which one it is, but it was a warbler. [Top of page, a Cape May warbler in fall.]

Jessica: I know that’s painful to a lot of people like Julie, but I know that when I go back and look at that list, I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, we had a whole handful of flitter flaring activity up there.” And I’ll remember it was September 1st, and maybe next September 1st, I’ll have a similar experience. And there’s dots being connected all the time.

Julie: And this is such a fun time of year, too, because it’s been a doldrum-y summer. It’s been hot and humid and gross, and I haven’t wanted to be out there birding. But now that it’s cooled down, it’s gotten drier air, and the birds are starting to come through, I’m doing a daily eBird list again, and I’ve really missed that during the summer. So always this morning I woke up to the call of a red-breasted nuthatch right outside my window, and I was like, “Yes, they’re here.”

So it’s just fun. It gets you kick-started. It’s really nice to be able to make a little daily list and then you can look back at it. It’s wonderful.

Margaret: And the great thing about using something like eBird is that you’re then sharing your list, and so scientists and so forth are also getting to see it, so it has that community aspect as well.

But yeah, I loved another sort of command in the book. It said: first impressions, leverage them to see what strikes you most about a bird in the first glimpse you get of it. And over the years, I tried to figure out what things should I look for? And I wouldn’t have thought in the beginning of learning to bird a little bit that looking at its bill, its beak, that that was important for instance, or do you know what I mean? Details like that. I wouldn’t think about that, yet sometimes something so small as that can say something about that animal.

Julie: Oh yes. And that’s one of the most common things you see on the Identification Group Facebook pages where people say, “I believe this is a yellow warbler.” And then people will swoop in and say, “Not with that conical beak it’s not.” [Laughter.] Because they’re just going on local color and field marks, and they aren’t thinking about overall structure. And it’s so important to really… honestly, beak shape is one of the first things you should look at.

Margaret: Which is, again, counterintuitive to a beginning birder completely. And I forget, and I have to remind myself to just look and see, because it tells us something about, well, about their family and what they can manage to eat, so to speak. You know what I mean? They’re not built, for instance, cracking nuts [laughter].

Julie: Right, right. Yeah. The beak will get you right into family. So I really kind zero in on the head, first of all, just so much information there.

Margaret: So the beak, and around the eye, if there’s an eye ring or anything definitive like that; what else?

Julie: Eye ring, eye line, and then kind of move on back on the bird: Does it have wing bars? Does it have long wings, does it have short wings? Does it have a long tail? What color are the legs? And it’s so funny because when people come to you with, “Oh, I saw this bird.” What color was it? “Well, it was grayish.” And you’re like, “Well, was the gray on the top of the…” “I don’t know. It was just grayish.”

It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that they haven’t taken the kind of careful look at it that you need to effect an ID.

Margaret: And then more in the spring, I feel like—again, that behavior thing that you guys were mentioning earlier, I feel like in the spring and summer—I can take notice of the behavior, at least more dramatic examples of bird behavior. In the fall, I don’t know exactly—except the so-called feeder birds, I guess how I would refer to them, who show up, I guess I know their behavior well—but I don’t necessarily know what the migratory birds, what behavior to expect of them. So I don’t know their signals that way.

Whereas in spring and summer, the visitors, if I have a Louisiana waterthrush, it’s going to be doing that bobbing dance move [laughter] over by the—actually, usually by the water garden. Or like an American redstart will be fanning his tail. And I don’t know, he just looks like a butterfly to me sometimes when he does that. Do you know what I mean? [Above springtime birding with bluets in bloom; photo by Julie Zickefoose.]

Julie: Yeah. You’re lucky to live around redstarts. They’re lovely.

Margaret: Oh, they nest in the garden, every single year they nest in the garden, usually the same tree in fact, which is totally wacky.

Julie: You’ve actually seen the little nest?

Margaret: Oh, sure. It’s right near one of the upstairs rooms, right near a window of one of the upstairs rooms, in a dogwood tree [laughter].

Julie: Wow. Perfect.

Margaret: Yeah, it is funny. I mean, look, a lot of it’s luck, right? But those types of things, I don’t feel like I know as well in the fall about the behavior stuff.

So again, we talked about how the book tells us more about how to be a bird watcher. It tells us about lots of other things. Again, taxonomy and various things. You talk about gardening for the birds, and Julie, you and I have had other conversations about this on the show and done stories about it and so forth.

And then we’ve also talked multiple times about bird feeding and so forth. And that’s the other season that kind of comes up, and that’s how a lot of people really have a relationship with birds is through bird feeding.

Julie: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It’s the single quickest direct line to their hearts.

Margaret: How many people in this country are involved with birds; is it 90-something million or something?

Jessica: Ninety-million is the latest report. Over 90-million people.

Margaret: Julie, I know you feed, do you as well; I mean, do you feed in the winter? Is there any kind of guidance that you offer in the book about bird feeding?

Julie: Yeah, that was actually one of the big rewrites I had to do because at the time in the nineties when Bill wrote this book, I was all about summer feeding. I was doing that, and I was actually appalled to see some of my recommendations, because I’ve backed completely off summer feeding now for so many reasons. I think primary being that I’m a gardener as well, and when you spread the welcome mat for birds in the summer, you also spread it for squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits and deer, who all enjoy the things that we put out for birds. So I quit feeding in May as soon as it warms up, and I don’t start again until about November. That’s just me. But I also think that from a disease perspective, it’s wise not to feed in the summer.

Margaret: Jessica, do you have a garden where you feed birds?

Jessica: I do. I live in the suburbs, so a very different habitat than Julie, and I do feed year-round, but I do back off in the summer as well, because I have some native plants that I would rather them be eating. And also, it’s expensive to be a year-round bird feeder [laughter], but I do enjoy it.

I have a lot of woodpeckers where I live, which are my favorite bird. I have had all kinds of babies this summer, and that’s my joy of the summer feeding is I’ve had red-bellied and I’ve had downy and hairy and flickers. So that’s my summer joy, is feeding the young woodpeckers.

Julie: So what do you feed them?

Jessica: I have a nut cylinder that they love, and I have peanuts in the shell. Yeah, it’s a busy place right now.

Margaret: I don’t feed in summer, either. I have black bear, so I can’t; they’re just brutal [laughter]. Oh man. So from sometime in March to around just after Thanksgiving, I can’t really feed.

Jessica: I’ve written about that in the magazine.

Margaret: But what about sort of the hygiene thing we were talking about that, Julie, you were saying diseases and so forth, and the updates that you had to make to the book from 30 years ago. Is there a regimen that you recommend? I don’t remember if I’ve read that part of the book yet. Is there a regimen for good hygiene as far as how we keep our feeders clean and so forth?

Julie: Oh yeah, I can talk about that. A lot of people don’t realize that if you’re feeding like niger seed, or thistle, you’ve got to shake your feeders once or twice a day or that stuff just piles up and gets mold. I’m very careful about that.

And with sunflower seed as well, every morning before I fill them, I invert the feeders and shake them hard to make sure that there’s nothing caking or matting or getting wet in there. That’s a very simple thing that you can do that really helps keep your feeders from becoming a moldy death trap for birds.

I also, in the winter, I will rake up the sunflower hulls underneath the feeder regularly and dispose of them, usually in the trash in bags, because that’s nasty stuff, just full of droppings and everything else.

And actually here in the winter, it gets so muddy in Ohio when it rains a lot that I often will go to the farm store and get a bale of straw and just mulch the area under the feeder to keep my feet off all those hulls and droppings, and to keep from slipping and falling on it [laughter]. And then it’s a simple matter to haul away the dirty mulch and put fresh down. And that kind of keeps the birds from contacting all that nasty stuff, too.

Margaret: Like litter in a pet box.

Julie: Pretty much.That’s just one of my coping mechanisms because it gets so slick and muddy under my feeder when it’s icy that I don’t want to break my arm doing this.

Margaret: And do we wash the feeder as well, like the tube feeders and so forth that we’re washing them?

Julie: You can soak them in a mild bleach solution, and just make sure everything is nice and not crusted up. And I’m also a huge dome fan. I put plexi domes or acrylic domes [above, at Julie’s] over all of my feeders, because I don’t want droppings falling into the food. So those of course need to be hosed off regularly, just because their job is to keep poop out of the food, so they get very poopy. As you may be able to tell, I’m feeding large volumes of birds in the winter, so my problems are exacerbated by great flocks of goldfinches and things like that.

Margaret: So something else that’s coming up in this time of the year and later on this year, Jessica, I wanted to ask you about it, and you talk about it in the book. There’s sort of these more advanced to-dos, like ways that we can participate and both learn and also share our information. We mentioned eBird before, but there’s all kinds of big days and counts and so forth. If people haven’t participated in those, are there ones that you do that you especially or that you’ve done for a long time?

Jessica: Yeah. You had mentioned earlier about the book telling people how to be bird watchers, but I want to emphasize there’s no wrong way to be a bird watcher. There’s no right to be a bird watcher. We are just explaining the many ways you can be a bird watcher.

So yes, some people are very much into eBird and keeping track of their lists and being involved in a technological way. And then other people will crave community and want to go to events. And there is a Big Day in October that is, I don’t know the date off my head-

Julie: Columbus Day weekend, usually.

Jessica: That’s right, yes. And so that’s a way where you are in a marked area, one spot, and you’re waiting for the birds to come to you. And so way different than having a Big Day where you go out and are trying to find as many birds as you can from the sunrise to sunset and beyond-

Julie: And burn as much fossil as possible.

Jessica: And those are fun, too. And some people love those. But there’s some winter festivals coming up, and there are, I think it’s a more active time for local bird clubs. My local Audubon is very active in the winter months with speakers and guests, and I enjoy going to those. So there’s a million ways to find community or not and events to get involved in or not. And there’s just no wrong way to bird, right?

Margaret: I mean, I love the Christmas Bird Count and the Great Backyard Bird Count and things like that. I mean, these are just feels good and it’s sort of a ritual.

Jessica: The Christmas Bird Count is definitely one of my favorites because also I know it is giving back to science in a very big way for over, I can’t remember, it’s over 100 years, but it’s such a longstanding tradition. And I know there are a lot of annual ones that people look forward to every year, and they have big celebrations and potlucks and things, and so it’s a fun thing to get involved with.

Julie: Is that still overseen by the National Audubon Society?

Jessica: I believe so, yes.

Margaret: There was one thing in the book I just want to ask you a quick kind of one-word answer kind of question to close out, which is: You talk about a spark bird, kind of a bird that sparked your interest. Maybe it was your first bird ever that you remember or whatever, but what’s each of your’s, Julie and Jessica? What’s your spark bird?

Jessica: Well, it’s kind of funny. I got my spark bird right here where I am today at Julie’s house, because when I was in college at Marietta College, I interned at “Bird Watchers Digest,” and I used to house sit for Bill and Julie when they would go on birding trips. And so I was here when I was winter, I know that. And I was in the kitchen and I looked out and I saw a bird the size of a crow hanging off of some kind of sumac. It was sumac, and it was eating the berries. And I was like, what in the world is that? Because it was so large and I could see red on it, and I knew it wasn’t a crow. And so that’s the first bird that sent me running into their giant wall of books in the living room to find a field guide [laughter]. And I had to know what this bird was, and it was a pileated woodpecker. So that’s my spark bird. That’s the bird I always get excited about, and surely why I love the woodpeckers the most. [Above, photo of male pileated woodpecker by Joshlaymon from Wikipedia.]

Margaret: Julie, real quick, yours is…?

Julie: Oh, blue-winged warbler. Eight years old, heard it bathing, crawled, saw it, loved it.

Margaret: Mine’s the brown creeper right outside my window in a big white cedar tree, an old white cedar tree.

So thank you both, Julie and Jessica, and I hope I’ll talk to both of you again soon.

enter to win a copy of ‘bird watching for dummies’

I’LL BUY a copy of “Bird Watching for Dummies” by the editors of “BWD Magazine” for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:

Who’s your “spark bird”—the one that you most identify with or delight in?

No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll select a random winner after entries close Tuesday Sept. 17, 2025 at midnight. Good luck to all.

(Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

prefer the podcast version of the show?

MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 16th year in March 2025. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Sept. 8, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).