Monday, 30 June 2025

Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

I wonder where they are (were) kept as caged birds? Native song birds are illegal to keep as pets, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act covers the Yellow Grosbeak. 
I would assume (and hope) the Colorado sightings are not previously caged birds.

Susan Rosine 
Brighton 

On Mon, Jun 30, 2025, 11:55 AM Steingraeber,David <David.Steingraeber@colostate.edu> wrote:
Apparently, Yellow Grosbeaks are known to be kept as cage birds.  In Rare Birds of North America by Howell, Lewington & Russell, the authors state, "Because yellow grosbeaks are kept in captivity (Hamilton 2001), extralimital records in both time and space are open to question."  They then give several examples where various state records committees have not accepted extralimital occurrences, as well as cases where such occurrences have been accepted.  They end their discussion of the topic with this: "Observers should not assume that extralimital records of this species are escaped cage birds, and all such occurrences should be carefully documented."

David Steingraeber
Fort Collins


From: cobirds@googlegroups.com <cobirds@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Susan Rosine <u5b2mtdna@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2025 9:02 PM
To: Colorado Birds <cobirds@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...
 

** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender **

To my knowledge, they are not at all suitable to be a pet/caged bird. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. 

Susan Rosine 
Brighton 

On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 8:31 PM John Shenot <johnshenot@gmail.com> wrote:
I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins
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Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

Hi David,
You bring up a good point regarding the Yellow Grosbeak(s)? in Colorado, which have now been documented in four counties(!). There has been a spate of unusual sightings of birds in Colorado recently including Black-bellied Whistling Duck and Anhinga in Boulder County; Hooded Oriole in Gunnison County; Lawrence's Goldfinch in Huerfano County; Cactus Wren in Otero County; Cocos Booby in Baca County; Crested Caracara in Pueblo County; Black-chinned Sparrow in Montezuma County; and just today, Tropical Kingbird in Arapahoe County. Wow!

Reporting sightings like these to the Colorado Bird Records Committee ensures that they will receive careful scrutiny as part of a rigorous peer review process including discussion regarding providence, which takes into account the possibility that birds may have escaped from captivity. When the CBRC accepts a record, it becomes part of the state's official list and is archived within the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The online reporting process is fairly easy and well worth the effort!

Best,

Peter Burke


On Mon, Jun 30, 2025 at 11:55 AM Steingraeber,David <David.Steingraeber@colostate.edu> wrote:
Apparently, Yellow Grosbeaks are known to be kept as cage birds.  In Rare Birds of North America by Howell, Lewington & Russell, the authors state, "Because yellow grosbeaks are kept in captivity (Hamilton 2001), extralimital records in both time and space are open to question."  They then give several examples where various state records committees have not accepted extralimital occurrences, as well as cases where such occurrences have been accepted.  They end their discussion of the topic with this: "Observers should not assume that extralimital records of this species are escaped cage birds, and all such occurrences should be carefully documented."

David Steingraeber
Fort Collins


From: cobirds@googlegroups.com <cobirds@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Susan Rosine <u5b2mtdna@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2025 9:02 PM
To: Colorado Birds <cobirds@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...
 

** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender **

To my knowledge, they are not at all suitable to be a pet/caged bird. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. 

Susan Rosine 
Brighton 

On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 8:31 PM John Shenot <johnshenot@gmail.com> wrote:
I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins
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Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

Apparently, Yellow Grosbeaks are known to be kept as cage birds.  In Rare Birds of North America by Howell, Lewington & Russell, the authors state, "Because yellow grosbeaks are kept in captivity (Hamilton 2001), extralimital records in both time and space are open to question."  They then give several examples where various state records committees have not accepted extralimital occurrences, as well as cases where such occurrences have been accepted.  They end their discussion of the topic with this: "Observers should not assume that extralimital records of this species are escaped cage birds, and all such occurrences should be carefully documented."

David Steingraeber
Fort Collins


From: cobirds@googlegroups.com <cobirds@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Susan Rosine <u5b2mtdna@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2025 9:02 PM
To: Colorado Birds <cobirds@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...
 

** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender **

To my knowledge, they are not at all suitable to be a pet/caged bird. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. 

Susan Rosine 
Brighton 

On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 8:31 PM John Shenot <johnshenot@gmail.com> wrote:
I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins
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Sunday, 29 June 2025

[cobirds] The flicker and the mountain cottontail

Greetings Cobirders,

I have to share (in description, as I didn't get any photos) what I witnessed earlier this (Sunday) morning, & have been processing since... 

I was upstairs with the door & windows open, doing stretches/tai chi etc when I heard distress/pain calls outside--and on looking down saw, in the grasses & forbs along our neighbors' driveway what appeared to be an adult cottontail rabbit on top of some other creature which was screaming in pain or terror.

 A few robins had gathered around and started scolding, which then were joined by a flicker that landed on the driveway and, while giving the "kyeer" call a couple times, hopped right up to the rabbit--which then released its captive and ran a few feet away. 

At that point I was thinking the victim was a bird, but couldn't see it very well so I went downstairs to grab my binocs & ran back upstairs. It was in fact a female flicker, obviously injured but quiet now that its attacker had withdrawn. But then the rabbit jumped back on top of it and held it pinned down and appeared to be pulling feathers out with its mouth (and the flicker resumed its cries of pain/alarm immediately). I could not believe it. For some reason at that point the robins AND the other flicker flew off, but the rabbit continued its mauling for a few more seconds, then jumped back off. 

WTF? I yelled down at the rabbit, and it just froze, a few feet from the flicker. I went downstairs & outside to scare it off, but when I got out there the rabbit was nowhere in sight. The flicker was obviously quite injured (I couldn't see any blood, but it was crippled and trying to scoot using its wings as crutches, and losing its balance, rolling forward etc)... I really didn't think there was anything I could do for it, and was reluctant to handle it in case it could be infected with H5N1 or something...

Do we have any mammalogists or lagomorph specialists in our cobirds family? If anyone has thoughts or experience with an interaction like this, please reply (privately if our good moderator feels this isn't about birds so much). Pretty baffling. 

Now I don't want to hear about the rabbit that launched a swimming "attack" on Jimmy Carter in his fishing boat, nor about the Killer Rabbit that held off King Arthur's men in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail"...😜 But I've never seen rabbits & (non-raptor) birds be anything but congenial cohabitants in the yard, and never heard of anyone reporting a rabbit attacking a bird. (When I google it, most of the "hits" are about hawks preying on rabbits--Not what I asked, but thanks, AI.) 

I did look up and found out that rabbits can (but don't often) get rabies, and one type of response is uncontrolled aggression & biting. I also considered that maybe it was a momma rabbit on the defense with little ones in a burrow under a tall grass clump, and the flicker went poking for ants too close--but found no sign of that when I poked around (only a bunch of flicker contour feathers).

Please don't dismiss me as nuts or unreliable, this actually happened. 

Marty Wolf
NW CO Spgs

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Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

To my knowledge, they are not at all suitable to be a pet/caged bird. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. 

Susan Rosine 
Brighton 

On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 8:31 PM John Shenot <johnshenot@gmail.com> wrote:
I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins

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Re: [cobirds] eBird glitch?

Not THAT problem, but today eBird was telling me that several common birds were Infrequent or Unreported, which is weird, because I bird the area a lot and have reported them all the time. 
Susan Rosine
Brighton 

On Sun, Jun 29, 2025, 7:41 PM zroadrunner14 <zroadrunner14@gmail.com> wrote:
Birders 
I have been experiencing a glitch w/the map link in eBird reports. I don't get the map of where the bird was seen, but something unrelated. 
Is anyone else having this problem? 


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Re: [cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

Hmmm, it appears that YEGRs have been seen in AZ, NM, CA, CO and IA, so perhaps an occasional appearance isn't out of order. You may recall that one was seen in Huerfano Cty in May of 2021.

Linda Hodges




On Sun, Jun 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM John Shenot <johnshenot@gmail.com> wrote:
I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins

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[cobirds] Yellow Grosbeak (Larimer) - just wondering...

I was pleased to have the chance to see the Yellow Grosbeak in Estes Park today. Even so, I find myself wondering if anyone on this group has considered (perhaps privately?) that it might be an escaped cage bird? How would one know? Given that this bird is a solid 1,000 miles out of range, without any obvious weather phenomenon to explain its presence, is it unreasonable for me to wonder?

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just a curious guy...

John Shenot
Fort Collins

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[cobirds] eBird glitch- Correction

Apparently my name was left off my previous post. I thought it was automatic. 
Ira Sanders 
Golden 


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[cobirds] eBird glitch?

Birders 
I have been experiencing a glitch w/the map link in eBird reports. I don't get the map of where the bird was seen, but something unrelated. 
Is anyone else having this problem? 


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[cobirds] Young Great Horned Owl calling or what?

OK, Cobirders,

so I used Audacity to do minor start/end editing & to "normalize" the recording I had made the night of June 27 with Merlin. Sorry, still some annoying if scattered background noise, and all the silence in-between call series (which occur at 01"-06", 09"-10", 22"-24", 36"-42", 56"-1'02", 1'47"-2'04", 2'12"-2'16", 2'52"-3'04", and 3'42"-3'52"). The better series are in red. 

Not like any juvenile GHOW I've heard previously, but what else could it be? Not a mule deer or its fawn, or a dog, or any other owl (or nightjar) I know of. No adult GHOW were calling here that night, tho they often are.
Thanks for your input.

Marty Wolf
Nw CO Spgs

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Re: [cobirds] Editing Merlin sound recordings?

Audacity is an open source app for Windows, Mac and Linux
You can download it for free at:  https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

With it you can trim down a recording to the snippet containing the interesting parts and save it in a number of formats.
You can also enhance a recording.  There are many options you can explore or simply keep it simple and trim a recording.
I have more experience using it to create ring tones for Android or iPhone from MP3 popular music song recordings, but it will read/write the .WAV format that Merlin uses just as readily as MP3 and several other formats.   Merlin saves your recordings on your phone and you can easily copy them to your computer for editing.

Good luck,
Chip

On Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 1:33 PM Marty <wolfmartinc@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, Cobirders,

Last night I had what was likely a young Great Horned Owl in a tree out back, making a repeated call I didn't recall hearing before (not at all screechy or harsh). Of course I couldn't make a visual observation, and Merlin made no suggestions for sound ID.

But I have a long Merlin recording, with especially long spans at the beginning and the end of silence (except for crickets and the clock ticking on the wall beside the window).

Is there any way to edit, or a program you can export a Merlin recording to in order to edit out chunks of silence?? (This recording goes on for over 5 minutes, with a fair amount of it.)

Thanks for any help.

Marty Wolf 
Nw Colorado Springs 




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[cobirds] Merlin — Birding Evangelist

I believe that the Merlin app is a secret weapon attracting more people to birding. More and more as I am out birding, I get approached by walkers, bikers or runners wanting to visit about what birds I am seeing. And more often than not, Merlin comes up in the conversation. These are folks that are not birders but definitely are getting interested in birding because of Merlin. Many of them mention their surprise at the number of species that Merlin ID's in their own backyards. I think that Merlin is the new spark app that will bring in a lot of new birders.

Gregg Goodrich
Highlands Ranch

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Re: [cobirds] Sorry, Dusky, continued.

Hello Cobirds,

In July of 2018, I was hiking up the trail to Venable Lakes near Westcliffe. Almost to the lakes where the terrain flattens out just before the lakes, I saw a female Dusky Grouse. It stayed on the trail for several minutes, walking ahead of me before it finally took off. I love seeing grouse and of course it exploded up from the ground right next to me as grouse love to do. The lakes are at about 12,000 ft. The grouse was just below that elevation. 

I did enter a checklist into eBird with photos. Since this was in Custer County I thought it might be of interest. 


I lived in Colorado for several years but now live in Tucson, AZ. I visit as much as I can and I still enjoy following the bird sightings. So I hope it is ok to continue as a member of this listserv.
Thanks
Debra Craig
formerly Highlands Ranch, CO
Now Tucson, AZ

On Jun 28, 2025, at 8:24 PM, 'Leon Bright' via Colorado Birds <cobirds@googlegroups.com> wrote:


I had not seen a dusky grouse in Custer County for over 25 years. Our cabin sits at 9200 ft.
Leon Bright , Pueblo 

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[cobirds] Re: Editing Merlin sound recordings?

I use the "Recorder Plus - Audio Editor" app on my iPhone to edit my Merlin recordings. It costs $4.99 per year and runs only on iPhones I believe. You can trim and normalize your Merlin recordings with this app directly on your iPhone. Therefore, when in the field or on a longer birding trip, you no longer need to transfer the recording to a computer. Just work them on the phone and then upload them to your eBird checklist. The app is easy to use and certainly speeds up the process of getting an edited version of your recording on to your checklist. You can also delete sections of a recording, but eBird discourages this in most cases.

Gregg Goodrich
Highlands Ranch

On Sunday, June 29, 2025 at 3:03:27 AM UTC-6 l p wrote:
I also use Audacity.   deletion of  sections is easy, but watch a quick youTube video.   enhancing volume  is also straightforward.  this is a powerful program, made for music editing;  a few quick steps help the Merlin recordings if you are trying to delete voices and a bird that isn't the focus species. 
Linda P
denver

On Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 1:33:55 PM UTC-6 Marty wrote:
Hi, Cobirders,

Last night I had what was likely a young Great Horned Owl in a tree out back, making a repeated call I didn't recall hearing before (not at all screechy or harsh). Of course I couldn't make a visual observation, and Merlin made no suggestions for sound ID.

But I have a long Merlin recording, with especially long spans at the beginning and the end of silence (except for crickets and the clock ticking on the wall beside the window).

Is there any way to edit, or a program you can export a Merlin recording to in order to edit out chunks of silence?? (This recording goes on for over 5 minutes, with a fair amount of it.)

Thanks for any help.

Marty Wolf 
Nw Colorado Springs 




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[cobirds] Re: Editing Merlin sound recordings?

I also use Audacity.   deletion of  sections is easy, but watch a quick youTube video.   enhancing volume  is also straightforward.  this is a powerful program, made for music editing;  a few quick steps help the Merlin recordings if you are trying to delete voices and a bird that isn't the focus species. 
Linda P
denver

On Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 1:33:55 PM UTC-6 Marty wrote:
Hi, Cobirders,

Last night I had what was likely a young Great Horned Owl in a tree out back, making a repeated call I didn't recall hearing before (not at all screechy or harsh). Of course I couldn't make a visual observation, and Merlin made no suggestions for sound ID.

But I have a long Merlin recording, with especially long spans at the beginning and the end of silence (except for crickets and the clock ticking on the wall beside the window).

Is there any way to edit, or a program you can export a Merlin recording to in order to edit out chunks of silence?? (This recording goes on for over 5 minutes, with a fair amount of it.)

Thanks for any help.

Marty Wolf 
Nw Colorado Springs 




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Saturday, 28 June 2025

Re: [cobirds] Editing Merlin sound recordings?

eBird has a helpful article on editing audio files for upload with a few tools referenced.


Best,
Jeff Percell


On Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 2:09 PM Todd Deininger <goldeneagle90a@gmail.com> wrote:
Instructions From ebird 

I also use Audacity

On Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 2:03 PM Jedediah Smith <jedsmith54@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Marty,

I personally use Audacity to edit my phone based recording. It takes a bit of messing around to figure everything out, but it is free and does everything I have wanted to do so far, including: clipping and deleting segments, amplifying audio volume, reducing background noise, and showing the spectrogram. I do it on my computer, I am not sure if there is a cell phone based app. I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Jed Smith

On Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 1:33 PM Marty <wolfmartinc@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, Cobirders,

Last night I had what was likely a young Great Horned Owl in a tree out back, making a repeated call I didn't recall hearing before (not at all screechy or harsh). Of course I couldn't make a visual observation, and Merlin made no suggestions for sound ID.

But I have a long Merlin recording, with especially long spans at the beginning and the end of silence (except for crickets and the clock ticking on the wall beside the window).

Is there any way to edit, or a program you can export a Merlin recording to in order to edit out chunks of silence?? (This recording goes on for over 5 minutes, with a fair amount of it.)

Thanks for any help.

Marty Wolf 
Nw Colorado Springs 




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Re: [cobirds] Abridged summary of cobirds@googlegroups.com - 4 updates in 1 topic

A couple years ago I was hearing a sound at night I couldn't identify.  Merlin twice identified it as a sora.  Living in the suburbs of Louisville this seemed exceedingly unlikely.  I was finally able to see the bird, a young great horned owl.  It would be nice to be able to update Merlin with that "song"!
Viki Lawrence
Louisville
On Sat, Jun 28, 2025 at 7:30 PM <cobirds@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Marty <wolfmartinc@gmail.com>: Jun 28 01:33PM -0600

Hi, Cobirders,
 
Last night I had what was likely a young Great Horned Owl in a tree out
back, making a repeated call I didn't recall hearing before (not at all
screechy or harsh). ...more
Richard Trinkner <rtrinkner@icloud.com>: Jun 28 02:01PM -0600

You can export the recording, and edit it with Raven on a computer. Raven is a free software editing program from Cornell. Here's the link: https://www.ravensoundsoftware.com/software/raven-lite/
...more
Jedediah Smith <jedsmith54@gmail.com>: Jun 28 01:42PM -0600

Hey Marty,
 
I personally use Audacity to edit my phone based recording. It takes a bit
of messing around to figure everything out, but it is free and does
everything I have wanted to do so far, ...more
Todd Deininger <goldeneagle90a@gmail.com>: Jun 28 02:09PM -0600

Instructions From ebird
<https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48001064341-audio-preparation-and-upload-guidelines>
 
 
I also use Audacity

 
 
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Longmont, CO ...more
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[cobirds] Sorry, Dusky, continued.

I had not seen a dusky grouse in Custer County for over 25 years. Our cabin sits at 9200 ft.
Leon Bright , Pueblo 

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[cobirds] Merlin Bird ID app—some "best practices"

Hey, all.

I've enjoyed the stimulating conversation about the Merlin Bird ID app; thanks to Paula Hansley for getting it going in the first place.

My take: By far the most valuable output from Merlin is the scrolling spectrograms of birdsong; the ID suggestions are of distantly secondary value. Here are a couple of case studies from earlier today, Sat., June 28:

First, at the Big Bluestem Loop Trail, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Adams Co., my companions with Denver Audubon and I were enjoying a spectacular show by at least five sage thrashers, a species that comes up with the dreaded "red dot" on the eBird app. So we needed proof. Well, we took photos. :-) But I also quickly ran Merlin, and you can totally see the herky-jerky phrasing in the spectrogram. Yes, "According to Merlin," but the proof is in the pudding: the actual spectrogram, as diagnostic as any photo of the species. Here ya go:



Now let's be honest. Reading a scrolling spectrogram in real time whilst the bird is under observation isn't for everybody. That's totally fine. Which brings up the second and, I would say, even more powerful case study from earlier today. Before all the sage thrashers, as I was pulling up at the refuge gate shortly before sunrise, I thought I heard a Brewer sparrow, another "red dot" species. The song was distant, the prairie was still pretty dark, and I needed an assist from Merlin. Sure enough, Merlin reported Brewer sparrow. But was it really that species? I'd moved onto something else, but I still had the audio because Merlin doesn't dump your recordings; the user has to do that. So I clicked on the file; and then clicked on the name of the bird; and, then, voilà, Merlin took me right back to the exact point at which the bird started singing. And you can totally see the diagnostic spectrogram:



I ran that diagnostic just a minute or so later, whilst in the field, but I could have done it back home this evening—or even weeks or months later. Merlin never forgets. (By the way, we documented an astounding 25 Brewer sparrows at Big Bluestem; also 7 Cassin sparrows there.)

As an eBird reviewer, and on behalf of all the eBird reviewers in Colorado and elsewhere, I'm practically begging you: Include the audio from Merlin! Imagine getting killer photos of, oh I dunno, a yellow grosbeak in Larimer Co., and simply stating: "Merlin." Same deal with relatively more prosaic birds like singing Brewer sparrows and sage thrashers at The Arsenal at the end of the third week of June. Upload the audio, and an eBird reviewer will do the rest; for particularly tricky outputs, we'll appeal to Nathan Pieplow to figure it all out... ;-)

A participant in this morning's field trip made an excellent analogy with reading an x-ray. Most doctors would probably want to, you know, actually examine the image, rather going solely off an AI's best guess that it was, say, a transverse fracture of the distal radius.

The convo here at COBirds all started with the concern that Merlin had misidentified a yellow-breasted chat as a lesser goldfinch. Did that really happen? Perhaps. Both species are exceedingly protean in their utterances. But we have the spectrograms!—really! we do! So we can go back to the soundfile, click on the name of the species, get popped right back to the presumptive lesser goldfinch, and see whether it was that species or perhaps a yellow-breasted chat.

Two other matters have arisen in the course of this interesting discussion.

1. The accuracy of the Merlin Bird ID app. It is, in a nutshell, fantastic. My sense is that we have crossed the "Garry Kasparov rubicon" with Merlin; or, if your inclinations lie elsewhere, the "Lee Sedol rubicon." Merlin has become that good. Here in Colorado, maybe Christian Nunes is still better, but, as brilliant as Christian is, Merlin is learning *much faster* than Christian, a mere human, can ever hope to. It won't even be close in five years, perhaps not even one or two years. I firmly believe that we humans will always derive immense satisfaction from recognizing birdsong without AI assistance. But that's different from being better than AI. We're not. Computers figured out how to beat the world's best chess players several decades ago, and the world's best go players in the past decade; identifying birdsong is, let's be honest, a comparatively trivial undertaking.

2. Human sensory perception vis-à-vis electronic gadgetry. It is true that our human ears and our smartphones' microphones are, in the broadest sense, "the same thing": Both are, to be technical about it, transducers—which detect sound energy, convert it to an electrical signal, and transmit it to a receiver. But the analogy breaks down when we compare what happens in the auditory cortexes in our brains with the motherboards in our devices, with substantially different capacities for processing the dynamical properties of frequency sensitivity, simultaneous inputs in acoustically complex environments, and the subjective impressions of amplitude, intonation, and modulation as they relate to the interpretation of natural sounds. In plain English, what we notice (what our brains think is "important") isn't the same as what the computer notices.

Finally, here's something that the AIs don't yet have on us—and that I have a hard time envisioning ever will: our deeply moving response to being on the prairie at sunrise. The "mental" component of it—"that's a lark bunting, told by its flight call, rising quickly through the 3kHz band"—isn't really the point, is it? Rather, the entire experience: the fresh morning air, the sunshine on our flesh, the twinkling spiderworts and luminous globemallows; and most of all, the human camaraderie, taking it all in, smiling together at a funny-looking beetle on the path, laughing out loud at bison rolling in the dust, learning and sharing and wondering together.

Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder Co.

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[cobirds] Dusky

Sorry, continued.

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