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| Rose-breasted Grosbeak Pheucticus ludovicianus (banded) |
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| Gray Catbird Dumetella carolinensis |
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| White-crowned Sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys |
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| Eastern Towhee Pipilo erythrophthalmus |
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| Chestnut-sided Warbler Setophaga pensylvanica (banded) |
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| Chestnut-sided Warbler Setophaga pensylvanica |
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| Blackburnian Warbler Setophaga fusca |
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| Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica |
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| Bobolink Dolichonyx oryzivorous |
Been a while since I woke up at 4 a.m. to go birding. But that’s what I did to join George and the gang for a “Global Big Day” trip to Montée Biggar, down in the southwest of the province, near Godmanchester.
I was not prepared for how hot it was, even by 8 a.m. The weather’s been super hot for the past week, and the leaves have burst from their buds, seemingly out of nowhere. I was also not ready how intensely buggy it was out. From the moment we stepped out of the car, clouds of whiny mosquitoes and black flies were swarming over every orifice and bit of exposed skin. I can still feel them crawling on my skin. Shiver.
The target bird for the day was the Blue-winged Warbler. This is a maddening ghost of a bird. We heard its buzzy call a few times over the course of the morning, and played a game of linear whack-a-mole, tromping up and down the 4 km (ish?) strip of country road that is Montée Biggar, so that we could huddle at the sight of the latest encounter.
By about 10 a.m., we had all but given up on the bird. We were driving slowly up the road, when we ran into a man and his son, who casually told us they were on some kind of rare warbler, the blue-something-something. Whaaaat? We all hopped out and formed a skirmish line, and started asking the kid nervous questions, as he was the one who had gotten on the bird. Was it at eye level or higher? Where did you last see the bird? Was it singing? Did you get pics?
This kid was a solid birder for his age. Dan and I used to go along on PQSPB trips at that age, but this lad was far beyond where we were at back then. We’d run ahead of the group with our crappy binos, in search of the only birds we deemed worthy of seeing, Kinglets. We liked them because they were ‘chubbyfluffy.’ This kid was all business, with top-of-the-line binos and a long-lensed camera.
There it is! Click click!
Where? Where in the tree is it?
There it goes! There it is again!
Where? Where?!
The kid was getting on the bird and even snapping pics of it, while not a single one of the rest of us could even see it. I guess your eyes are superhuman when you’re that age. Let’s see how good his eyes are after he sees how disappointing the real world is with them, ha ha.
We finally got a fleeting glimpse of the Blue-winged Warbler as it flashed across the road, a yellow streak with slaty wings. Very unsatisfying looks at a long-awaited life bird. Oh well, that’s birding, eh. Good job, kid. Ten-year-old me is envious of your laser-beam robot eyes.
And now for another rant, this one about the Merlin bird ID app. As someone who is hopelessly bad at identifying most birdsong by ear, you’d think I’d be all about a technology that can pull songs out of the air and ID them for you. It’s a good tool, a cool gadget for sure...if used sparingly, I might suggest.
When the swarms of bugs thinned for a glorious moment, I looked around closely at the extended line of birders, and noticed that almost every one of them was holding their phone in the air, some from car windows. This was the first time I’d been somewhere where every single birder was using Merlin.
I know I sound like a dinosaur, but I worry that birders are losing the fundamentals – going out into the scrub with binoculars and a tattered field guide, and trying to figure out what is there with your ears and eyes. With your own senses.
When I suggested that I’d heard a snippet of White-throated Sparrow song, the notion was sort of met with incredulous silence, because no one’s Merlin app had picked it up. What is this...man vs. robot?
There were a number of birds listed that were not heard or identified by anyone’s actual ears – rather the Merlin app heard something in the distance, and made the call. That’s what I think is fundamentally wrong/annoying about Merlin. If you don’t hear/see something yourself, then I'm not sure if that bird should be listed. But that’s just my opinion. Apparently there are people that post long birding lists based on what their phone heard…not on birds they themselves heard and/or saw.
For the record, Merlin makes loads of mistakes, often listing Barred Owl or Bahama Woodstar or whatever its robot brain thought it heard. I also saw Merlin completely miss the several loud and obvious bursts of song form common birds. So there. Take that, Merlin.
I guess I’m just an old man standing on a mountaintop, shaking my fist at the sky when it rains. But I think there really will come a day, sooner rather than later, when birding tech will reach the absurd extremes I grumbled about in my silly sci-fi tale, Bird-a-thon, 2029 AD.
Why go out to bird at all? Why not stay at home and send out birding drones to do our dirty work? We can sit in Adirondack chairs and make lists of what our drones saw while sipping delicious mojitos. That'd be the life, and clever way of avoiding bugs. Grumble grumble, get off my lawn!
Maybe I enjoy the 'unsolved mystery' aspect of birding...puzzling over an odd call, or leafing through a field guide, in search of a match for the field marks on the bird you saw vanish into the undergrowth. The feeling that you left an unidentified bird in the field, perhaps to figure out next time. That's what kind of what helps me wake up at 4 a.m. to head out into a landscape of biting insects and blazing sunshine. Having an endless stream of computer-generated 'answers' doesn't really replicate that thrill for me.
Oh, the day ended with 53-ish species at Montée Biggar, and another 14-ish species from the road and at several other nearby spots.
