Michelle

By sitting long enough and quietly, I guess, more birds flew close but I’m still sorting out which hummingbirds and songbirds are visiting. Using the Merlin app photos and songs/calls actually confounded things, as there are overlapping color patterns and my ear is not refined. I love to learn, yes, but the joy of birdwatching for me is in the watching and the listening, and talking to them, to the gestalt of sharing space with them. I did use “explore birds”, and look forward to noticing if the soaring swift I see has a white throat, spotting the forked tail of the barn swallow, catching the sweet song coming from the plain brown-ness of the house Wren, spotting the distinct black phoebe (name source for the daughter of a birder friend), and looking at the woodpecker in our nearby oak grove to see it looks like a Nutell. Also, when restrictions lift, and I can visit my Dad again, I want to see the Northern Road Runner with babies that he watches from his back porch in the mornings.

1) Songbirds- what’s not to love? I live in Redlands, So Cal, near an Oak Grove, in a neighborhood with various mature trees and native chaparral hills. My days are beautified by birdsong, and I don’t know who is singing. I voted for the Carolina Wren because it represented the Wren family, but I love the sparrows and warblers, too. I appreciate that the Wall of Birds and the Merlin app have sound/song clips. On the Wall I also explored shore birds (sandpipers), seabirds (pelican), owls, raptors and the barn swallow- I almost voted for it. 2/3) Today I saw a yellow-green finch like bird, a few hummers (one is greenish, another brown and white), and a soaring swift or swallow type bird. And I heard a symphony of sweet song, as well as a distant crow and a nearby falcon. I’m a novice identifier, but a lifelong bird lover.