Quogue - For the last 16 years, Tom Damiani has served as the visitor center coordinator at the Nature Conservancy's Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island. The Preserve's wide range of birds of its 2,100 acres make for a bird watcher's paradise. Damiani, 55, has been an avid birder for more than three decades, and because of that, he's not only able to recognize birds by their appearance, but their calls. On December 7 at the Quogue Wildlife Refuge, Damiani will host a nature program entitled "How And Why Birds Sing," giving bird enthusiasts a deeper look into their behavioral patterns.

Hamptons.com: How did you get started with bird watching?

Tom Damiani: I was in my early 20s. I'd always been interested in the outdoors. As a kid, I was catching snakes and trying to keep them as pets. My sister and I were out with a pair of binoculars and a bird jumped out. It was a fox sparrow. There were five or six pages of sparrows in the field guide and we found the fox sparrow, and I thought that was cool. There were all these different possibilities of sparrows. It was kind of fun to do, to have your binoculars and figure out what they were and to make a list. I've been doing it ever since.

What kind of birds is the East End most known for?

TD: Iconically, it's the osprey. Their nests are pretty visible. In the winter, the ducks. A lot of the ducks come to the waters around Long Island. It's winter. There are a lot of different species of ducks this time of year.

When is the best time to bird-watch?

TD: May. It's migration for all the different species of birds. For example, at Mashomack Preserve, we record 120 species of birds or more. In other months, it's 70 or 80, so there are many more birds around in May.

If you're a bird-watching novice, where's a good place to start?

TD: Your backyard. To first start getting into birding, the best thing is to have a feeder and to be able to recognize and identify birds there in the winter. As spring approaches, you can start coming into the yard and figuring out what they are. From there, go to your closest wooded area along the beach. Try and keep it local and get a field guide that just has eastern birds in it.

What proper equipment must one have to go bird-watching?

TD: A 7 x 40 or 8 x 42 pair of binoculars. Binoculars are real important. A spotting scope is good when you're out in the winter. You see ducks on the water and stuff like that. And then a good field guide.

What do you like most about birding?

TD: For me, it's never knowing what you're going to see when you go out. That's why May is such a great time. Any bird can show up during migration. I believe that when I go out. I'm always hoping to see something really unusual. Another great thing about bird-watching is your connection to nature. You really get into it. You don't just see a bird and mark it down. You see its behavior, what tree it's in. You connect.

What's your most memorable birding experience

TD: I was living in Connecticut, I was pretty much a novice, and I knew that bald eagles were around. Somebody told me I might see one if I went up to this place called Lake Zoar, overlooking the Lake Zoar Dam. I was with my sister and somebody else, we weren't walking up to this overlook, and no sooner than we get to this overlook this bald eagle came from behind the hill there right in front of our eyes. It was incredible. It was very exciting. It was the first bald eagle I ever saw, and to see it like that was pretty spectacular.

What's the best bird-watching spot that nobody knows about?

TD: There's a really neat place in Greenport called Arshamonaque Preserve on Chapel Lane. It's a small preserve, but it has this wonderful viewing platform you can climb up into. You overlook these two ponds and it's just a spectacular place to get in and sit there for a while. You're so high they're flying right into the canopy of trees where you are. It's a neat place. I don't think a lot of people are aware of it. Particularly, an experienced birder should be going there to experience that.

What about beyond the East End?

TD: Jamaica Bay in Queens. Because of its proximity to the city and all of the development all around it, it's really an amazing spot. There are a lot of shore birds, a lot of winter ducks. It's a great place. There's another place that when you go you never know what you're going to see.

What can people learn from the "How and Why Birds Sing" program?

TD: To be a really good birder, an accomplished birder, you have to be able to recognize the birds by their songs and calls. You miss an awful lot if you don't. You can be walking in the woods in the summer, hearing this song, and you don't know what it is. You won't even know it's there. A lot of people are interested in learning how they do that. This particular program goes a little bit deeper. It's a little more technical. It talks about how and why they sing, so you can now recognize their songs and how and why they do that.