No sighting - question re: Merlin app

[lcc...@comcast.net]

Good morning! I recently started using the Merlin app, which is SO much fun, but wondering how accurate it is? This morning it ID a Carolina Wren and a Belted Kingfisher. I might buy the wren, but in 20 years I've never seen a Kingfisher here. I do live along the Prairie Path and there's a creek that runs behind me. Just wondering.

Thanks!

Leslie Cummings

DuPage County

[Tammie Rogers]

Hi Leslie,

I love Merlin.  But, you are right that it's not perfect.  My experience with Merlin is that it can misinterpret sounds which, when I look up the species, I realized was a man-made sound.  This is especially true of rough sounding vocalizations like a Belted Kingfishers "burring" sound.  I have moved my tripod across a hard rubber surface that created that sort of low grow sound and got a hit for a large bird like a Sandhill crane (that I know isn't here.)  Or, a large dog can bark in the distance and it will hit on Green Heron.  Which, I don't know isn't here because I filmed one, once, at our Pond and they are elusive to spot.

Merlin can be deceived by a Euro Starling's mimicry, especially for Cedar Waxwings.  The App also has confused Brown Thrasher and N Mockingbird calls, at least for me (where I am observing the bird making the calls.) This past winter Merlin repeatedly recorded (over a couple of days) the call of an E Wood-Pewee that I knew wouldn't be here, then. The good thing was that Merlin also hit on the Starlings on a couple of those occasions, which helped sleuth out the reality of the situation.

Tammie Rogers
Brownstown, IL

Fayette Co, IL

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Regards,

Tammie (& Robert) Rogers

Changing the Actions, Aptitudes and Attitudes Of Dogs & Their People

618 427-3333

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[jnrachlin]

You definitely wouldn't want to be ID-ing birds by Merlin alone, plenty of miscues, but I wouldn't discount the possibility of a Kingfisher - you mentioned a a creek, and they are migrating through - see if you can find it!! And a Kingfisher's call is pretty distinctive, you'll be able to track it down if it's there.

[Ed McDevitt]

Merlin is a well thought out and constructed tool for birders and it comes from a great source.

That said, keep in mind that a phone app isolating and identifying sounds among many other sounds is quite remarkable. Bird song ID apps prior to Merlin were, at least for me, facilities I tried once and never again. Merlin's sound ID simply does a better job than those apps, and it's resident in an app that has become a Swiss Army Knife of birding apps. I too have had weird IDs come from Merlin. Once in December at Morton Arb I heard a bird call totally unfamiliar to me and fired up Merlin. It identified the call as that of a Prothonotary Warbler - possible in September or maybe October, but definitely not in December - and had there been one unseasonally present I doubt it would have been singing. However, I played the Merlin sounds for this warbler, and one of them was sort of close. So I forgave the app. Maddeningly, I couldn't see the bird, so have no idea what it was.

As jnrachlin says, we have Kingfishers in northern IL and they're likely migrants about now. So it's not impossible that's what you were hearing. They sound kind of like a failing car starting motor.

Ed McDevitt

(630) 651-6227 (C)

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[LORRA RUDMAN]

Regarding the belted kingfisher- been seeing them all winter in lake county along the DesPlaines river.

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