Traveling to exotic destinations is a great way to remember what it’s like to be a beginner birder - and how to deal with that. You have to look at each bird critically. Sometimes you have no idea what species you’re seeing. You spend a lot of time looking through a field guide.
The example at hand, literally, is my field guide to Birds of East Africa. There are a lot of species in it, but not overwhelmingly more than are in, say, the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Birds of East Africa has 1,388 species and National Geographic has more than 800 species).
I’m about to lead a tour to Tanzania, and of course have been studying the field guide like mad (which is what a beginner should do with their North American guide). With the baffling array of species, including over 50 bird families not found in the U.S., I am frankly having a hard time finding particular species rapidly in the guide. Does this sound familiar? Ever had a tough time locating, say, the vireos in your North American guide?
I decided after spending 5 minutes searching for the hornbills that using labeled tabs marking the various families was the way to go (see photo), and what a difference! Most new birders get pretty quick at knowing generally what sort of bird they’re looking at (duck, hawk, woodpecker, etc.), but, once there, need to look it up to narrow down the choices.
Now, when I get to Africa and spot an unfamiliar swallow, I can snap the field guide open to the right pages immediately. Though I probably won’t ever put tabs in my North American field guides, maybe I should. I’d always been sort of a snob about it - thinking part of being a good birder was knowing the order birds come in the field guide - but the speed would certainly help, especially since recent taxonomic changes have moved some species and thus changed the order; e.g. the vireos are now away from the warblers, and loons are no longer at the front of the guide.