“I saw a brown bird. What was it?”

We receive this kind of question quite often. But of course, there are so many birds that fit that description that we’re as stumped as they are; we need more clues. And it’s amazing how much more information the questioner has, they just don’t realize it — until we start our interrogation:

“Where did you see it? In your backyard, in a pond, in the ocean?”

“How big?”

“Long tail or short tail?”

“Did it have any stripes on the head?”

“Was the bill thick or thin?”

With a line of questions like this we might narrow the possibilities down enough to exclude, for example, the brown-plumaged American bittern, female mallard, immature herring gull, and female common Eider if the person tells us it was a small bird seen at their backyard feeder rather than a large bird seen in a marsh, pond, or along the coast. If they describe the bird as being closer in size to a cardinal than a chickadee, has a thick bill, and a white eyestripe and is at the backyard feeder in late May, we might guess that the bird is a female rose-breasted grosbeak.

Sometimes, the observer is unsure of the size, in which case the bird could be the smaller female purple finch. Maybe they didn’t notice whether or not the bird had an eyestripe, thus it could have been a house sparrow or a female house finch.

You can see how it can be difficult to track down the exact identity of a bird from a verbal description by an inexperienced bird observer. But today’s technology can make all of this a moot point. Now that most people have a digital camera, quite possibly built into a cell phone, we usually respond to the “What is it?” question by asking the person to take a photo of the mystery bird and send it to us.

Even better, a video that then can include the sounds the bird was making, its behavior, along with plumage details. Again, a cell phone or iPad that can record a video can shed light on the mystery.

Often, when people send or show us these photos or videos, they apologize for the quality, saying it probably won’t be of much help because the quality isn’t great. But even a bad photo will get you closer to an ID because it will give a sense of habitat, shape, size and general coloration, all at a glance.

Cousin Diane sent us some photos recently of a mystery bird that she and husband Gary had at their backyard feeder up in New Sharon. Without the photos, it would have been hard to figure this one out since it was an albino purple finch! Thanks to the photo, it was a cinch.

While we’re on the subject of technology and birds and cousins, another cousin, Darlene, up Wilton-way told us about a loud bird she was hearing singing in the night.

She thought it was a whip-poor-will, but hoped we could make a positive ID for her. She took her phone out to the back porch and held it out so we could hear and sure enough, we could hear the repeated “whip-poor-will” song in the distance.

She later recorded it on her iPad and posted the sound file on the Web for us and others to enjoy. Knowing it’s one of our favorite bird songs, she called again a few days later, but unfortunately, we weren’t there to enjoy the beautiful, haunting song.

Instead we listened to it on a piece of increasingly obscure piece of equipment that, despite its lack of frills, captured the song perfectly: our answering machine.