I know I have mentioned this before, but in the past few years, I have become more bird curious. I have always had like a love/ hate relationship with birds, but lately it has begun to swing more towards love than hate.
I used to have more of a fear/ hate reaction with birds. People who know me might have their own recollection of times when I freaked out because a bird got too close to me. In my younger years, I have definitely screamed at parks when little birds sitting in ornamental trees have flown close to the head. I have screamed and gotten up from my seat when bird tricks are exhibited at zoo and theme park shows even though I probably knew what I was signing up for when I took a seat in an audience. I have refused to go in rooms when little parakeets are loose outside of their cages.
I am still not going to let a bird sit on my shoulder and I still do not want to go into a pet store that has birds flying around, but in the last few years I have become more curious about birds in the wild. When I walk around, I sometimes find myself wondering what birds I am seeing. I find myself paying more attention to their colors and patterns. For example, I am currently wondering if yesterday I saw a crow, raven or a blackbird ( I looked it up, it was probably a crow). I got myself bird seed for my birthday and put it in a feeder that I got from my parent’s house. I even looked up which variety was the best to attract birds to a backyard feeder.
I have been talking about this newfound bird interest with people around my age lately. I love this meme from the National Park Service.
Or this one
So if you are like me and are suddenly bird curious, maybe this is for you:
Recently, I recommended to someone who wanted to know more about birds that they download the Merlin App on their phone. The Merlin app is published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It is made by a member-supported unit of Cornell University.
You can use the app to identify bird songs and calls. You can use it to identify birds in a photo. You can use a three question bird ID wizard to identify possible matches. You can build a scrapbook of your birding memories and learn about birds near you.
I am only a baby birder and have only a little experience using Merlin but I believe it is a great tool for getting started learning more about birds in your area. Two years ago, I used it to identify and learn more the Egrets in the trees near our vacation rental in Chincoteague, Virginia.
To do this, I just turned on the Sound ID feature. I just tried it again while I was sitting here and writing this post and learned that the Best Matches for the birds that I am hearing outside of my window as I write this post are: House Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, and Carolina Wrens.
Here is one more demonstration of a way that you could use Merlin. You could search for bird photos on your phone that maybe you put aside so that you could look up some day. Maybe, like me, you just haven’t gotten around those bird pictures yet.
I used the Photo ID feature on Merlin to discover the second bird from the left (taken in 2020) is most likely a Muscovy Duck and the third from the left (taken this past January) is either a Red Shouldered Hawk or a Cooper’s Hawk. I also read about the birds. I saw maps of areas where they inhabit as well as areas they migrate to and from.
The only criticism I have of the Merlin app is that it takes 542 MB of internal storage on my phone. For reference, the Chick-fil-A app takes up 225 MB and my banking app takes up about 235 MB. Perhaps, if your phone is low on storage, you might have to delete somethings in order to use Merlin.
[Note: I do not work for Merlin or represent it in any manner. I just think it is cool app. As a librarian, I would like in the future to feature cool resources from time to time on this blog.]
The Merlin app is a large application because every time you use the Sound ID feature not only does the identification of birds come from the Cornell servers, but the audio file with time and precise location stamps from your phone is sent to Cornell. The ornithologists use these snippets of sound to study the numbers of birds, distribution patterns, and geographic behavioral patterns of the bird species that are recorded. The Merlin app has led to the most complete data set of animals ever recorded. It is a really big deal in ecological research. The Seek app is a corollary for plants and fungi.
Thank you anonymous comment person, I am sure that you aren’t that nerdy. That is great information and it is very exciting!