Merlin Bird ID – Home

The Merlin Bird ID app, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a free tool that helps users identify birds by sight and sound. It utilizes a vast database of bird observations from eBird, including photos, sounds, and location data, to provide accurate identifications. The app offers several features to aid in bird identification, including Photo ID, Sound ID, and a digital field guide with range maps and ID tips. 

[I posted recently of the Merlin app from the Cornell Ornithology Lab that helps identify bird calls. One bird that shows up fairly regularly from our back patio is the Oven Bird. Use this video to hear its song:

(Keep it playing as you read this post.)

This, in turn, inspired college classmate, SB Larry (Iowa SBs) to write:

Just random soundscapes
Until Merlin helped me meet
Nature’s Whiffenpoofs

Then, coincidentally–although there are no coincidences– SB Bill (Tobin Bridge SBs) sent this:

The Oven Bird

By Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Copyright Credit: Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird” from Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1921): Public domain.

I still have yet to see one!