Merlin

A friend recently introduced me to an app called Merlin Bird ID, and I am hooked on it.  Apologies if you already know all about it.

If I am sitting reading in the garden I leave it "listening" next to me and it flags up all the birds it hears, producing a list and a sound recording.  It knows where you are in the world so it compares the bird sounds with the local bird "library".

My first surprise was that the Red Kite isn't in the list of birds round here.  So when it hears a Red Kite as it was doing in the scan above it says "HEARING A BIRD" but doesn't identify it.  The wavy line followed by 6 wobbles in the sonogram is a perfect representation of a young kite telling its parents where it is.  Once I have mastered the app I will be able to submit photos and sound recordings so that an expert can verify them and add the Red Kite to the local bird list.

The list of birds shows some of the usual suspects round here.  But the second surprise was that the bird I hear constantly at the moment is not a Dunnock, as I had assumed, but a Blackcap.  I had no idea that there were Blackcaps round here and I have never seen one.  Now I have my binoculars close at hand and maybe one day I will be able to post a photo.