About a year ago I downloaded an app called Merlin. You can let it listen and it'll identify all the birds around you by their calls. I've found myself rushing outside with my phone if I hear an unusual bird while I'm in my study. Then I look at myself and wonder, who the hell is this?
then I look at myself and wonder, who the hell is this?
Someone with passion for the world they live in!
I have the same experience with the Merlin app after a friend suggested I download it last year. It's so fun seeing real time identification of multiple birds at once
As a kid I adored being indoctrinated by my bird fanatic grandmother. I'd spend so much time looking through her Audubon's Guide to Eastern Birds (US), and she would help me identify anything that came to the feeder.
She died several years ago and that was the one thing of hers I asked for. Now my four-year-old daughter likes to look through it with me. I even bought her a brand new copy the book's western counterpart, since I live in western Canada now. I've even converted my wife who was once so ignorant of bird-related lore that she asked me one time if birds have ears.
Yes, they do have holes at the sides of their heads that are used to capture sounds. They usually skip the meat flaps we have around them though, in favour of some magnificent fluffy feathers
The only reason I didn't impulse buy a teleconverter to tack on my impulse bought 600mm is that it would just get me (more) underexposed pictures. But the urge is real, and we don't even have bald eagles around here.
I need everyone to catch up. Soon it will be cool that I was a thirteen year old running around the neighborhood with a pair of binoculars. My friends are going to be so jealous that I got such a head start.
Neat birds. They're pink because of their diet like flamingos, and iirc while they're kinda monogamous, the ones I'm most familiar with had all kinds of soap opera style drama. They also don't smell great.
Source - I worked next to the roseate spoonbill enclosure at Animal Kingdom for a few years.
The sandhill crane is probably my favorite bird though. There's something extremely dinosaur like about them.
When you like looking at animals, birds are one of the easiest choice. Birds and insects are the only two categories that you'll encounter pretty much anywhere.
I just noticed during a work meeting today that the birds near my window become extremely weary when I look into them. To the point that one behaved like that Super Mario ghost that only moves when you are not looking.
I've always lived in high migration pathways, so I had a mild interest from that. Then I picked up Wingspan in Switch which has tons of interesting birds in it. I noticed even Target sells the original tabletop game, but the Switch version is a great way to learn the game.
I feel attacked. I saw some birds cross the street while driving to visit my Dad and I spent like 8 hours looking up birds to try to figure out what they were and I've been into it ever since.
identifying them by the sound when you're walking through the woods or w/e is just as addictive.. there's a couple of falcons around here that have been making a bunch of noise, along with all the crows and cardinals and robins and everybody else..