Birds In The Garden

[TorqueVR]

I live in a village just outside Bristol with a busy road at the front, a once a day railway line at the side and a tiny brook at the back, so nothing special. 12 days ago my son suggested I should get the "Merlin" app on the phone that identifies birds from their song.
I put the phone outside the back door half an hour ago and have so far recorded 16 different species today, and 35 species in total in less that a fortnight. I'm quite amazed, I had no idea how many different birds there are in one location. Just saying!

[snuffy]

My wife loves the Merlin bird app. She thinks its fantastic.

But, it cant find a chicken or a gull for some odd reason.

[TorqueVR]

True, our next door neigbours have very noisy chickens that it doesn't recognise but it has picked up a lesser black backed gull

[Magic919]

It’s just the beginning. I moved on to a permanent set-up using Birdnet-Go on a Raspberry Pi.

[Landlubber]

Mine managed to identify a Monkey faced Disco Hawk last week.

[Smint]

Didn't know about bird song apps, thanks.
Last few weeks there's been an unusual birdsong late into the evenings in the trees behind our home, hope its stays long enough to identify by song.

Tried the Merlin app but its riddled with ads, by the time waded through the guff the bird will have gone, found another app that drops straight into record soon as the app opens.

[Landlubber]

Nightingale?

[Smint]

Landlubber said:

Nightingale?

I wondered that too, about a week ago a bird about Dove size but with the mottled but slightly more colourful chest of a thrush was on our roof.
Would love to know for sure, yesterday evening when the dog and i went down the garden no unique song, sods law said bird has flown.

[jimothyc]

I've setup a Raspberry Pi running Birdnet https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go , which is basically a permanently on version of Merlin. It's setup on the side of the garage and constantly detects birdsong.

There's a lot of people doing this and the results can be sent to the https://app.birdweather.com/ website. Totally overkill, but if you're the sort of person that loves stats and graphs, it's quite the thing.

[geeks]

Landlubber said:

Monkey faced Disco Hawk

Incidentally that would make a great pub quiz team name

[TorqueVR]

Smint said:

Didn't know about bird song apps, thanks.
Last few weeks there's been an unusual birdsong late into the evenings in the trees behind our home, hope its stays long enough to identify by song.

Tried the Merlin app but its riddled with ads, by the time waded through the guff the bird will have gone, found another app that drops straight into record soon as the app opens.

I had exactly the same problem. You clicked on a scam site. Try again and be more careful!!

[Smint]

TorqueVR said:

I had exactly the same problem. You clicked on a scam site. Try again and be more careful!!

makes sense, thankyou.

[TorqueVR]

I have no particular interest in birds or birdsong but so far have logged 28 species in my garden and 6 more in my son's where I've been staying for the last few days. It's becoming a bit of an obsession, and I'm worried that I'm going to turn into a train-spotter or a stamp collector as well. I wish I hadn't go the bloody app.

[Smollet]

Landlubber said:

Nightingale?

Merlin identified one at the Sussex NR in Henfield quickly followed by a turtle dove so that was quite something. However it identified a wood pigeon as a bittern in my back one day. So it’s not 100 % accurate but excellent nonetheless.

[Simpo Two]

TorqueVR said:

I have no particular interest in birds or birdsong but so far have logged 28 species in my garden and 6 more in my son's where I've been staying for the last few days. It's becoming a bit of an obsession, and I'm worried that I'm going to turn into a train-spotter or a stamp collector as well. I wish I hadn't go the bloody app.

Time to upgrade. Get a camo jacket, tool up from https://www.swarovskioptik.com/gb/en/birding and get out there!