Buy this book now!

Identify Yourself:
The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges (Paperback)
by Bill Thompson III

I want to own this book! It's invaluable. My only wish is that he'd included the great-tailed grackle in his section on blackbirds. I remain hopelessly confused between those two.

Otherwise it's full of useful information. For instance, I can stop looking at chickadees around here. They're always going to be Carolina.

Black-capped chickadees invade about once a decade, when they can be found south of their normal range. We know this only because bird banders are required to measure the birds to separate the species. Outside of these invasions, they're just not found south of their normal range.

Open any random page and you'll get great advice. And a chuckle.

For most bird watchers the biggest problem in identifying owls is finding one. Owls are nocturnal. Humans are diurnal, and when we are out at night, we can't even see well enough to avoid walking into trees.

Be careful: gaining confidence with the ringed plovers has been known to lead people to look at other shorebirds.

Trying to turn large female kestrels into merlins is a well-established form of entertainment among bird watcher.