To the surprise of some of my friends and colleagues who generally assume that, due to the nature of my work, most of what I’ve done for the past four decades is play outside, I am not very knowledgeable about birds. That is, identifying birds by sight or sound.
I do OK on sight with the marquee players—Cardinals. Robins. Bluebirds. Mourning doves. Crows. Eagles. (Mature bald eagles, that is. The white-feathered head and tail are sure giveaways.) Hawks (red tails are generally a sure thing, but specifics elude me on most other hawks). Male mallard ducks (those are the ducks with the green heads). And a few others. But I’m certainly not a bird expert, and, when it comes to identifying birds by sound, I’m generally, well, a birdbrain.
Several years ago, while attending a conference, I sat in on a birding seminar. I was advised to arrive early, as the birding seminars were popular. I arrived late to discover the room filled. I was expecting a talk on bird migrations or something similar but was surprised to hear an elementary-level talk on setting up backyard bird feeders. The speaker, a round, ruddy-faced man, was passionate and well-informed about his subject. His nearly hour-long presentation included the pros and cons of different styles of bird feeders and what type of foodstuff to put in them to attract various birds, followed by a vigorous question-and-answer session. Afterward, I sought him out and said that, although I wasn’t really a birder, I had enjoyed his talk and might set up a backyard feeder.
“I hope you do,” he said. “You’ll enjoy it.”
“How do you attract birds to the feeders?” I asked. He smiled sheepishly. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “They’ll find you.”
I eventually hung a tube feeder outside the kitchen window, and a few birds found it. Then a few more. Then a few more. I soon found myself refilling it twice a week.
I found the birds mildly entertaining. My wife enjoyed them more than I did. We added a second feeder. I was soon refilling both twice weekly.
I still could hardly tell one bird from another, and bird sounds were generally gibberish to my ears. Then one day, an email popped in from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is widely known as a bird and birding authority.
At various times in previous reporting, I had contacted the birding folks at the Cornell Lab to check a fact or secure some birding data, so I was on its email list. The message was an offer to try the Merlin Bird ID app.
I normally ignore this type of try-this-app online pitch, but I downloaded this one. There were a few setup steps, including adding “bird packs,” which, basically, is geographic software. You could install all, pick and choose any of nearly 150, or follow the app’s location-based bird pack recommendations. I picked the one covering the Southeastern U.S., which includes Kentucky. But if you’re traveling to Namibia or Nepal or Honduras or dozens of other places around the globe, there are packs for those locales, too. In all, according to Cornell, the entire bird pack software includes more than 10,000 bird species on six continents.
I walked out my back door and onto the deck. A handful of birds scattered from the feeders. The app has a photo ID function, but I turned on its “Sound ID” and waited. Within seconds, it had detected an American cardinal, a brown-headed cowbird, a mourning dove and a tufted titmouse. There wasn’t a bird in sight. My wife has since used the app to identify nearly 40 birds from our backyard confines.
It’s enough to turn anyone into a birder.
According to the Cornell website, “Merlin’s ability to identify birds seems like magic but is powered by science.” I suspect artificial intelligence also plays a part in this scientific magic. It is impressive. It’s also free and available at the Apple app store or Google Play. For details, go to birds.cornell.edu/home/ and use the All About Birds pull-down menu.
The COVID-19 lockdown proved, ironically, to be a boon to some outdoor recreation, including birding. According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, there were about 45 million birders in the U.S. before the COVID outbreak. Post pandemic, that number has swelled to an estimated 67 million.
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Kentucky is an Important Birding Area, according to the National Audubon Society. An excellent source for birding information across the Commonwealth, including recommended birding locations, is the Kentucky Ornithological Society, birdky.org.
Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com