Day 1221: Birds!
Jul. 25th, 2023 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeI finished the first draft of my book today! I'll probably tinker with it a bit more then check in with my agent, then see if I can find beta readers.
To celebrate, I went on a walk, and as I was walking along a few blocks from here I heard an interesting birdsong, which reminded me that I'd downloaded the Merlin app and hadn't tried it yet. So I did - not quickly enough to learn what that bird was, but I still had a lot of fun. On my walk I heard Stellar's jays, crows, lesser goldfinches, and scrub jays.
I think the only birds I can recognize by their songs are flickers, crows, chickadees, seagulls, and obvious ones like ducks and geese and doves. Oh, and western meadowlark, our state bird, which is pretty distinctive. It had never occurred to me that Stellar's jays and scrub jays have different songs, for example. Or that robins' songs are so quiet! (I should note for my readers that our robins are not like European robins; ours are really thrushes.)
So this was really interesting. I knew I couldn't hear many birds from our yards, what with all the cats, and I wanted to try a variety of spots, so I hopped in my car and drove around some. Near the woods by the school, I heard a spotted towhee (which I later saw in the woods), a robin, more crows, and a Vaux's swift, then in the woods I heard a brown creeper, which I don't even know what it is. Then I drove to Tugman Park and heard a bird that the app had a hard time identifying then finally decided it's a type of wren. I drove to Edgewood Pool, but there were too many people and a lively dog. I'm looking forward to doing it again!
The app is very interesting. It shows the frequency of the sounds as it records them, and a blue light appears when it's trying to identify a bird, then when it does, it displays the bird in a list. You can then click on a link to have it replay the part of the recording that it identified as the bird. The only thing is, when you're walking down the street looking at the phone, it makes you look really tuned out of the world around you, while actually you're very tuned in. So when I saw my friend T's husband walking home from the store, I hastened to explain what I was doing (not just staring at my phone like a zombie), and he sounded interested in trying it too.
To celebrate, I went on a walk, and as I was walking along a few blocks from here I heard an interesting birdsong, which reminded me that I'd downloaded the Merlin app and hadn't tried it yet. So I did - not quickly enough to learn what that bird was, but I still had a lot of fun. On my walk I heard Stellar's jays, crows, lesser goldfinches, and scrub jays.
I think the only birds I can recognize by their songs are flickers, crows, chickadees, seagulls, and obvious ones like ducks and geese and doves. Oh, and western meadowlark, our state bird, which is pretty distinctive. It had never occurred to me that Stellar's jays and scrub jays have different songs, for example. Or that robins' songs are so quiet! (I should note for my readers that our robins are not like European robins; ours are really thrushes.)
So this was really interesting. I knew I couldn't hear many birds from our yards, what with all the cats, and I wanted to try a variety of spots, so I hopped in my car and drove around some. Near the woods by the school, I heard a spotted towhee (which I later saw in the woods), a robin, more crows, and a Vaux's swift, then in the woods I heard a brown creeper, which I don't even know what it is. Then I drove to Tugman Park and heard a bird that the app had a hard time identifying then finally decided it's a type of wren. I drove to Edgewood Pool, but there were too many people and a lively dog. I'm looking forward to doing it again!
The app is very interesting. It shows the frequency of the sounds as it records them, and a blue light appears when it's trying to identify a bird, then when it does, it displays the bird in a list. You can then click on a link to have it replay the part of the recording that it identified as the bird. The only thing is, when you're walking down the street looking at the phone, it makes you look really tuned out of the world around you, while actually you're very tuned in. So when I saw my friend T's husband walking home from the store, I hastened to explain what I was doing (not just staring at my phone like a zombie), and he sounded interested in trying it too.
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Date: 2023-07-26 11:57 am (UTC)I have heard the Merlin app is quite fun. My friend from here who moved to the McMinnville area loves it. The Idaho Bird Watchers group I follow on Facebook says they make mistake but they are really into birds. I am thinking about getting it.
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Date: 2023-07-26 10:32 pm (UTC)The Merlin app is so interesting! It's free, and I think it's from Cornell. Mine made a mistake yesterday when it thought one of the Stellar's jay sounds might be a bald eagle - but it put a red dot on it. I didn't have my reading glasses so I didn't know what the red dot meant. Maybe it means, "this is a guess but unlikely."
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Date: 2023-07-26 11:52 pm (UTC)You are so very smart. I can't wait to hear more about your book!
Hugs, Helen
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Date: 2023-07-27 07:53 am (UTC)Thanks for the encouragement! :)
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Date: 2023-07-27 11:35 am (UTC)I have Merlin, but I haven't been too successful with it.
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Date: 2023-07-27 07:42 pm (UTC)I'd guess they haven't optimized properly for SA yet, too bad.
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Date: 2023-07-31 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-02 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-04 09:57 am (UTC)