Understanding Bird Behavior

Hi, I’m Kevin McGowan. I’ve loved birds all my life. I’ve always wanted to identify every bird I see, but I also have been fascinated by what they were doing, by their behavior. Birds are cool to watch because we can see them do so much. They’re conspicuous, they’re out in the day like us, not like other mammals, and they’re everywhere.

I’m an avid birder and lister. But, even when I’m chasing rarities, or a new life bird and am happy just to have gotten a glimpse of it, being able to watch that bird do something makes the whole experience so much more fun, so much more satisfying for me. I’ve been fortunate that I have been able to spend a significant portion of my life doing just that, watching birds do stuff. As an ornithologist and behavioral ecologist, I’ve done of lot of research on bird behavior, and I’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours watching one of the most common birds on the continent, the American Crow. I never get tired of it, and I see new things all the time.

And, I’ve learned a lot about bird behavior and how to watch it, too. I’ve become a trained observer and can pick up on little nuances of behavior that are key for understanding what’s happening. And, importantly, what’s about to happen. In this course, I want to share some of the insights I’ve discovered over the years. I’d like to help you approach watching bird behavior with some key ideas in mind that can make watching birds more fun and rewarding.

Birds communicate in some subtle and some not so subtle ways. I want to introduce you to some of the understated ways they talk, and show you that even small gestures can have big meaning. You’ll learn the types of things birds talk about, how you can read their body language to understand who is saying what to whom. Learning what to see is important, but understanding how to interpret what you see is important too. Birds aren’t people, and they don’t have the same needs and motivations that we do.

So, what do they need, what do birds want? This course is designed to give you an introduction into the ways birds behave and communicate. It will help you understand how to interpret some kinds of signals that cut across species’ lines. It’ll also help you learn how to interpret what you see, both by helping you structure your observations and conclusions, and by helping you understand the important forces shaping bird behavior. It’s full of videos, images, and self quizzes to help you practice what you learn. It’s meant to be a reference guide that you can return to over and over. And, it’s meant to be fun. I hope you enjoy it.