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 !birding@lemmy.world 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.
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?
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
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!
