This week, at a lake house in Michigan, I kept hearing a sound that made me think of a gull, but wasn’t. At least, I heard it when I didn’t see any gulls. I’d heard that the Merlin bird identification app can now identify birds by sound. So I held my phone up and it told me right away: merlin.
That’s right, the first bird I ever identified with the Merlin app was a merlin. It turns out that the picture I took above actually captured the bird making the sound. See that dead tree poking up above the treeline, in the center of the picture? See that bird on it? That’s the merlin–a small falcon. Now that I know it’s out there, I hear it multiple times a day. I played it for my friends who own the house and they recognized the sound right away, but had no idea that there were merlins here, or even what a merlin is.
There’s quite a world out there, if you have the right tools to discover it. Once upon a time, the tools for learning to recognize the call of a wee raptor were a lot of patience, a knowledgeable friend, maybe some LPs of bird songs. Now that computer in my pocket is going to teach me a lot of new bird songs, very fast.
Photo: me
So glad to get your recommendation for this app. It is now downloaded and I’m ready to go!