Imagine you walk through a wood and record the sounds, play it back later at 300 times slower, hearing trees cumming and ejaculating over you while you were standing there... You'll never walk through the woods again ..
Oddly enough, other than the "part" thing, the Grey go-away-bird follows that formula. Not so much with the sad flycatcher (who'll be alright, he just needs to process it all), the little bustard or the drab seedeater , who was clearly named by a dude who hates birds 😂
Merlin is amazing. I heard birds outside my new apartment and thought of them as nice background noise. Within days of installing Merlin, I could tell sparrows, cardinals and robins apart without seeing them. Whenever I heard a new bird, I'd grab my phone and open Merlin.
One day it sounded like a robin and a cardinal were having and argument while both simultaneously having a stroke. Merlin figured out it was a catbird, a relative of the mockingbird that learns the songs of other birds then strings pieces of them together in a disorganized song to impress the ladies. Basically, the male catbird who can sing the weirdest songs using the most species signals that he has "been around" for enough seasons to learn all those songs and therefore must have good genes the females want to pass on. It's mind blowing to learn all this about things that are going on outside your window.
It's pretty great, there's also Cornell's companion citizen science app called eBird that you can use to count birds around you which is useful to ornithologists to track bird population density and migration patterns!
Very relatable. I started leaving food for some local magpies about a year ago, and now they wake me up every morning at 6.
I once had a problem when suddenly some tits arrived and started stealing all the food. A huge magpie would take like one hazelnut and be on its way, while these small fuckers would eat like pigs, and then hide what was left. They'd take the nuts and shove them somewhere between the flowers on my balcony. Tough the magpies too have often burried nuts in the soil below the flowers, only to dig them out again.
And it was so cool to watch some sparrow coming and going a dozen times to pull out some weeds that have been growing (I left the pots with the flowers outside over winter, the flowers died and weeds started to grow), and then carry them to a hole in a wall where a brick is missing which presumably is the nest.
But it was so so cool when I got woken up a few days in succession to a silhouette of a majestic crow standing on my balcony (my bed looks directly through the balcony window facing north-east). Crows are so cool, and magpies are really beatutiful, though extremely skittish.
One thing I do miss about Reddit is r/crowbro where people who feed crows post pictures of the gifts crows leave for them. It was one bright spot in the sea of shit that is Reddit. Birds are utterly fascinating.
It's actually what motivated me to start hahaha. I wanted a gift from my corvid friends, but my corvid friends run the hell away if they even catch a glimpse of me in the corner of the room through a window. I guess because it's a small balcony instead of a large, open and safe space. Even though I gave up on the idea and now feed them for no other reason than to feed them, I wish they would at least be chill with my existence. I'm fairly certain they think nuts grow out of flower pots.
I have these three ravens who like to hang out in my backyard every morning and walk around looking for stuff. They're pretty chill and don't give me too hard if a time. I think they like the compost pile with bugs, and we leave some water out for them.
But holy shit when they throw a house party and on Saturday afternoon you realize you've got a dozen crows on your roof making a racket, does it ever get noisy!
The neighbours hand raised this abandoned baby starling a few years ago, so it had decided everyone in the neighbourhood was his best friend too, and used to visit me, sit on top of my head and sing, demand bugs and berries, and tease our dog. It got so I could pick its voice out in the tree, and would come and sit on the kitchen window and yell at us to come outside.
No shit. This happened to me this year. A bird crossed my path while I was running and I had to double take because it was so cool looking. Now I look forward because I see him pretty often now. Ever since I check birds out all the time now
My cousin at 31 years old said this weekend, "I know I'm getting old because I was sitting on a swing at a friends and thought to myself 'This would be a great spot to watch birds from'."
My grandma got me into birding when I was a young child. My friends always text me pictures of birds like it's a quiz. Maybe this means they'll start to catch up.
My wife got me birds of Europe last year because I once mentioned it's a neat book (my parents have it). Next thing I know I buy some binoculars for birdwatching and started tracking the birds that visit my garden. It's not a spectacular list but I am proud of it because I used the book to identify the birds and got it confirmed with birdnet. The list: house sparrow, blackbird, goldfinch, swift, common house martin, common linnet, greenfinch and blue tits.
Edit: and wood doves
Sorry Jesse Case, I think I must have been born old. I've always noticed birds, if I see or hear a species I can't recognise, especially if near where I live, I must id it to restore my inner peace. I'm yet to see this change as I age
He has actually rambled about birds, and it's actually pretty funny. He got off a tangent about a neighbor's peacocks in his past, then talks about how owls would take their heads off in a swoop. "But I digress..."
Unfortunately I don't quite remember the Knowledge Fight episode it's in, so I can't direct you to it. What I recall is he was talking about something completely different and god sidetracked.
I recently found out that a monthly pass on my city's transit system, which I have, is exempt from the extra charge when going to the airport (YVR), so hell yeah I'm taking advantage of that! They have two really cool observation areas outside security where you can see the gates and runway.
I got into birding this spring as a hobby, thinking to myself "it's free, you just need to use your eyes and ears", withing a month I bought a $350 pair of binoculars. I've managed to fight off the temptation of a decent camera so far, thankfully. I found a great park at the tail end of spring migration about 10 minutes from my apartment, and the dawn chorus was almost sensory overload, the was so many different species singing and calling. I'm looking forward to what new birds I'll see during this fall migration and especially next spring migration.
I'm incapable of picking a cheap hobby. But this might be the healthiest. Gets you out and about, and birders are so nice and friendly. Even started planning holidays around it.
The latest gen mirrorless cameras are great for birding. Light enough to be handholdable, and subject detection is great.
I dunno why, but I've always been fascinated by the twitchy, blank-eyed movements they make. Also, there are some fantastic high def videos of birds that my kiddo's cat loves to watch with me.
Bird identification is so fun with how easy it is to find them now! I love the Merlin app for identifying birds. It can also find birds as by their song in real time which is super cool.
My 63yo mom likes to memorize birds names in the same way 90s kids did with pokemons. I think she does it since she was a child. When we're taking a walk together she points to the birds and say their names. And I learn to much with her, I love when she does it!
This made me laugh. I'm in my early 40s and in the past six months I've been using the Merlin app to identify birds by their song. It's really fun to see what's going on around me in terms of birds. I had no interest before.