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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/548613
I always take a walk around my office during lunch. Finally managed to see and also record a firecrest. Such a tiny but cool-looking bird!
So cool! I always enjoy seeing birds from other parts of the world than I frequent.
If I may add, politely, that you should be careful not to lean too heavily on the sound ID of merlin for accuracy. It's good, but not great by any means.
We need a Birding community here!!
I made [email protected] if you’re interested :-)
And you’re right about Merlin! I never fully trust it either, but in this case I just used it to confirm that the call I heard was, indeed, a firecrest. I don’t hear them too often so I wasn’t sure. I ended up seeing it as well.
But I’ve had Merlin misidentify things before. It heard part of a Song Thrushes singing and thought it was an oystercatcher 😬
Edit: wrong link
I usually use it a starting point and then go into the details page and listen to the reference calls to see if its the right bird. If I can see the bird, its pretty easy to tell if its right or not.
That said, I've only had Merlin misidentify a bird once. However there are a lot of times where it fails to identify a bird, even if the recording is crystal clear.
Thanks for sharing, this is so cool! It's nice that the ID is offline (even though it takes a good amount of storage).
Merlin is such a cool app. It's like a pokedex but for birds. Isn't always perfect but a good way to figure things out
Those mostly look like common birds to me…
But seriously, for those not in the know the app is Merlin Bird ID, it’s free and really cool. You open the app, go outside, press record, and it’ll show all the birds around you it can hear.
Common in the grand scheme of things, sure. But common for me? Nope. Especially the Firecrest is only rarely seen around here so it was exciting to finally be able to see it and also hear it sing :-) Same for the linnet, it isn't all that common either. The Common Redstart for example is also quite uncommon here, despite its name. You mostly only see Black Redstarts around here.
Where are you from that they're so common where you are?
I think the joke is that they mostly all have a name that start with 'Common...'
Wow, seeing this makes me realize I've gotta travel to pump up my life list. All of these would be new to me as an American
Beautiful birds! Should start doing the same same myself, I keep saying I will and end up just vibing with them instead.
Hopefully, I'll have a decent toucan photo for the birding group at some point if one of those lil jerks and my phone cooperate.
We have mockingbirds at my house so the sound ID gets thoroughly confused sometimes 😂
I love the Merlin app's sound feature. I use it to see who might be around so I know who to look for. I'm learning my backyard birds calls & visuals and I guess I'm becoming a bird nerd because I get really excited/happy when I get one right!
This is awesome. I wish I knew about this app a couple of weeks ago before visiting Azores.