The Jersey Birder

A new tool for better birding: Merlin’s Sound ID

Wouldn’t it be great if you could record the song of a bird you can’t identify and have it instantly recognized? The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has taken a major step forward in realizing that dream with its recently launched Sound ID feature in the Merlin app.

I’ve used that app for the past few years to pin down the identities of various birds I’ve seen and heard, but Sound ID makes the app even more useful. Here are some of the advantages I’ve already experienced:

With the touch of button, Sound ID starts recording and quickly notes which birds are calling or singing nearby.

If you hear a familiar bird singing, within a few seconds the app will bring up the most likely candidate. I toggled Sound ID on and off while walking the nearby golf course, where I spotted and heard plenty of familiar birds. Northern cardinals, blue jays, Carolina wrens, American robins — their names and photos all came up instantly. It was gratifying to get confirmation that I can ID these birds so easily.
The app will alert you to birds you might not know are nearby. On my golf course walk, I turned on the app and up popped a belted kingfisher, a split second before I confirmed the sighting. At Reed Bryan Farm at Mercer Meadows Park yesterday, the app kept hearing a blue grosbeak, a bird I know from other birders is common there now. I didn’t find one, and I will try again soon.
The app can hear birds quite a ways off. I first tried Sound ID in my yard, and I was impressed with its ability to identify distant bird calls. I’d hear a cardinal or tufted titmouse off in the distance, and the app would pick up on it. Also, human voices, vehicles and other background noises don’t seem to faze Sound ID.
It can distinguish Carolina chickadees from black-capped chickadees! To me, this capability is the Holy Grail. I live in an area where the two populations intersect and maybe even inter-breed. The Carolina version was on the golf course, while the black-capped turned up when I took a short walk on the Princeton University campus. I’ll be curious to corroborate these findings when I can simultaneously get photos of the birds and a recording of their songs from the app.
The app allows you to save recordings. You have a choice of saving the recordings or trashing them once they’ve been made. Either way, you have the option of playing them back (listening on headphones or at low volume so you don’t freak out our little bird friends).
The app isn’t perfect, but it’s a huge asset. The app reported a great crested flycatcher on the golf course and, today, in my yard. While it’s possible one could be nearby, I suspect the reading is spurious, even as I hold out hope that I’m wrong.

Overall, I’ve been overwhelmingly impressed by Sound ID. Identifying birds by their calls is a skill I need to develop, and this new feature is already helping me learn and improve.

Seattle: City of Crows

Other than making a few quick trips across the Delaware River into Bucks County outside Philadelphia, I’ve been a New Jersey birder exclusively since the COVID pandemic arrived. Finally I was able to venture afar, traveling to Seattle to visit one of my sons.

When I lived in Seattle 30 years ago, I didn’t pay much heed to the birds around me. I was determined to pay more attention — much more — on this trip.

And what did I find?

Crows.

In the trees outside the windows of my son’s third-floor apartment. On the telephone wires strung across Aurora Avenue. In every park we visited.

I encountered so many crows, in fact, that I suggest Seattle’s biological classification name should be urbs corvidarum.

I saw more crows than seagulls, even allowing for the many gulls I spotted on the roof of Ivar’s restaurant as our ferry from Bainbridge Island pulled into the slip on the Elliott Bay waterfront downtown.

I believe all the crows I saw were American crows, rather than the regional variant Northwestern Crow that lives along the Pacific Coast from Puget Sound to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

As frequent as they were, the crow sightings were incidental. Only on one morning during my week-long stay was I able to get out into the woods to look methodically for birds. After a frustrating drive around Thornton Park, we finally found a trailhead and took a short walk on narrow, overgrown trails.

I could hear a few chirps but, in what was no more than a 20-minute walk, I spotted exactly one bird: a song sparrow, the same variety of bird I see in my yard every day.

The visit also coincided with the record-breaking heat wave that gripped the Northwest in late June. My son will have air conditioning the next time I visit, and I’ll plan more fully to lock in some birding time.

I’m uncommonly fond of the common yellowthroat

A common yellowthroat belts out his song in an open field at the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm June 11, 2021.

I believe I crossed the threshold from casual birder to thoroughly hooked last spring when I began recognizing the song of the common yellowthroat. The song was unique, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t see the bird chirping it from the trees at the Pole Farm at Mercer Meadows Park.

Finally, I got a chance to ask a passerby on the trail if he could identify the bird. Without hesitation, he said, “Common yellowthroat.” He made a few “whish, whish” sounds, hoping to draw the bird out of the trees, but no luck.

Weeks, if not months, passed before I finally connected song to bird while crossing an open field. I was a few hundred yards from the row of trees where I usually heard the witchety-witchety song. There he was, the masked yellow bandit, perched on the branch of a spindly tree and singing his heart out. I even got a photo.

This spring, I’ve had no trouble finding the erstwhile elusive bird. Maybe the yellowthroats have concluded their threat assessment and consider me low risk. I have heard and seen quite a few at the Pole Farm since May, in the alley of trees I frequently walk and out in the fields as well.

As I was hiking back to my car this morning, I heard a couple of yellowthroats singing in one of the main fields. To my delight, one was maybe 20 feet off the trail, and I quickly brought my camera up and zoomed in. The result was five frames of the bird, and I’ve cropped in on the best of the lot to illustrate this post.

For me, that common yellowthroat I spotted last spring was a departure point, signifying my advancement in recognizing new species and my growing enthusiasm for birding.

For a point of comparison, I’ve gone through various stages of knowledge and capability in playing guitar. I got the easy chords (A, C, D, Em, G) down quickly. But I struggled with the fingering for the tricky B and F chords. Eventually I figured them out, and I can play them with confidence, if not competence. I can even pull off a C#m without much trouble. As my skills improve, I appreciate the music even more.

So it goes with birding. I’ve moved well past the cardinal-blue jay and raptor-vulture stages and on to warblers. With the huge variety of birds in this state, nation and world, I have plenty more to learn.

Bring it on!

A close encounter with Brood X

This afternoon I set out into the 90-degree heat to look for birds in the Institute Woods, whose paths Albert Einstein walked during his Princeton years. The woods, named for the adjacent Institute for Advanced Study, are ordinarily a place for a quiet, contemplative ramble on the trails through the trees, with birds chirping and flitting about.

But this is no ordinary time. The Brood X cicadas emerged from below ground a few weeks ago to engage in a once-every-17-years bacchanal in the treetops. These red-eyed insects cavorting today are the grandchildren of those who emerged in 1970 during Princeton University’s commencement exercises. They were the muses for Bob Dylan, who received an honorary degree from Princeton while the cicadas roared. He later wrote “the Day of the Locusts” about the experience.

A cicada clings to a branch in the Institute Woods, Princeton, June 6, 2021.

I saw and heard few birds during my walk today, which was overwhelmed by the droning of the cicadas. I’m accustomed to the usual buzzing noise the annually emerging cicadas make during the summer, but the sheer numbers of Brood X looking for love created a high-pitched, almost metallic din. Their mating cry is incessant, at a volume that approaches or even exceeds 100 decibels, from what I’ve read.

To give readers a sense of the din raised by the cicadas, I’ve added this Facebook live video I did during my visit to Institute Woods.

The only other natural word experience I’ve had that made a similar racket was from the sandhill cranes congregating on the Platte River in central Nebraska many years ago. But that noise wasn’t as loud or all-encompassing as the clamor of Brood X.

Two cicadas lie dead or nearly so on the ground, near the holes in the earth that they and their fellow creatures made when emerging from the ground in recent days.

Many people are repulsed by the cicadas. With their bulging red eyes and their propensity land on anyone who wanders into their way, the cicadas can be creepy. One landed on my thumb as I was holding a paper map just after I’d passed the trailhead today, and I instinctively jumped back and shook the bug off. Another landed on my shoulder a minute later, and I initially panicked before calmly flicking it away with my hand.

Even with a high “ew!” factor, the cyclical emergence of the cicadas was a wonder to behold. I am grateful that I was able to experience the phenomenon, which I believe is a particularly apt occurrence for those of us humans living in 2021.

We are emerging from an underground of a sort, having been locked down, quarantined, isolated and otherwise cut off from our families and friends because of COVID-19 restrictions for the past year-plus.

The cicadas are proof of that life renews itself, even after a long period of darkness. They are a sign of resilience through the ages. I hope to see their offspring in 2038.

Naming our neighbors in nature

Like so many others keeping close to home since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, we’re paying much more attention to the creatures inhabiting and visiting our yard and neighborhood. We can’t resist naming some of them.

I mentioned recently that we’ve named Aeneas and Dido the house wrens who’ve moved into in our backyard bird house, after the hero and his tragic lover in Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid.

A prior pair of house wrens were dubbed Peter and Ginny after good friends. One wren I called Jeremy Wrentham, a nod to the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It was he who noted that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation,” an idea that would seemingly appeal to the house sparrows who gorge themselves all day at one of the feeders.

Naming the critters is not a recent phenomenon.

A hummingbird who regularly buzzed around the pool at our central California home was called, for no particular reason, Larry, after my father-in-law. Whether Larry was one bird or several, we couldn’t be sure.

But as for Emile, we were certain.

Emile was the albino squirrel, named by a neighbor’s daughter, who lived in our neighborhood when we first moved to the Princeton area a few years ago. He flourished for a few years, a regular visitor to our yard. But then he stopped coming around. We wonder what happened to him, and we remember him with a small white squirrel figurine that sits on a bookshelf.

Squirrels were the first critters I can remember having names. My father called squirrels what my young ears heard as “Stricko.” That’s also what he called his uncle who lived with my grandparents in Pennsylvania. I figured Stricko was just a nickname, and it wasn’t until years later that I figured out that Stricko was really “Stryko,” the Slovak word for uncle.

My great uncle was something of a character, and Dad always had a twinkle in his eye when he’d say the name.

We had a squirrel with half a tail who was with us a for a while here in New Jersey, but Stubby disappeared, too. We call the groundhogs who live on the neighboring golf course Joaquin, Alejandro and Esperanza, for characters in the movie “Mask of Zorro.” Oh, and there were the bunnies, Dave and Pam, an inside joke about other friends.

Last March, a pair of house finches built a nest in a wreath on our front door. The work was done in just a few hours, and the prospect of facing angry birds as we stepped outside was too daunting. I moved the nest down the wall, still under the eaves, affording them some protection.

We named them Mark and Laura, after friends who are bird lovers and have given me many, many birding tips.

Mark and Laura Finch were welcome companions, arriving just as COVID lockdown hit. We enjoyed watching them so much, I put a motion-triggered camera near the nest to catch the action.

By April, we noticed a few eggs in the nest and told everyone we were expecting grandbirds.

Then one day I noticed another egg had been added, a brown one slightly larger than the first batch. I don’t remember the sequence of events, but a day or two later, I spotted dead on the ground an infant bird. Steeling myself, I peeked inside the nest. All the eggs were gone.

I suspect that the brown egg was laid by a catbird, and I’m not sure exactly who killed the baby and what happened to the eggs. Mark and Laura never came back, but whenever I see a pair of house finches in the dogwood tree or at the feeder, I wonder: did they move nearby?

And what, if anything, do they call us?

Now are the foxes

A red fox wandered onto the lawn in May 2017, ever on alert for squirrels.

On another futile rose-breasted grosbeak watch this morning, I looked out across the golf course beyond our property line and spotted a couple of red foxes.

It’s not unusual to see a fox trotting across the course, sometimes even venturing onto our backyard grass. The golf course maintenance superintendent told me that foxes have lived on the course for at least 20 years.

Typically I see one fox at a time, and once in a while I’ll see two. Today’s total started at two and, amazingly, ended up at six. I can’t say with certainty, but it seemed as if there were two parents and four kits. The foxes were out of range of my camera, but through binoculars and even with the naked eye, I saw a Disney-esque scene, the kits chasing and wrestling one another playfully on an embankment while Mom and Dad looked on.

Adding further to the idyll was that in the foreground, near the garden plot in the back yard, a couple of squirrels romped about, snacking on whatever had fallen from the trees overnight.

But playtime was soon over. One of the adult foxes moved onto the golf course, surveyed the landscape and started out intently on what I assume was a mission to bring back breakfast.

The odds, my squirrel friends, are not in your favor.

On rose-breasted grosbeak watch, a mighty fine surprise

We’re in the second week of May, and I’ve been watching the reports of rose-breasted grosbeaks roll in from other birders nearby. No such luck here at home, even as I’ve camped out with my coffee and camera each morning, hoping one of them will arrive at our feeders.

This afternoon as I passed by the bank of windows to the rear of our house, I was startled to spot a pileated woodpecker hacking away at one of the trees holding up our hammock.

What a creature!

This is only the third time I’ve spotted one of these magnificent birds at home. The first two came last year, once in a tree on the golf course just off the back of our lot, the second on one of our trees. Before that, my only other knowing sighting was of several on the wing in Vermont one fall a few years ago.

In the woods of New Jersey, I’ve heard them many times, their primeval ka-ka-ka-KA-KA-KA-KA cries taunting me from a distance.

A pileated woodpecker pauses before ripping into a tree May 10, 20221.

Today, as the bird traveled up and down one of our maples, I was able to grab my camera and take a few shots through a window, then step out onto the patio for a few more. The bird flew onto the golf course and lighted near the base of a tree, giving his thrilling call to claim his spot before tearing into the bark.

With camera and monopod, I followed onto the course, advancing in stages, getting closer and closer, stopping near a cart path and gently sidling westward to get more of the sun behind me.

I took several more shots, then switched to video. Although I’ve gotten a little better at shooting video with a monopod-mounted Canon DSLR, the video still looks as if it were shot by a goldfinch undulating in flight.

Thank you, Mr. Pileated — a name rooted in the Roman tradition of ex-slaves wearing the “pileus” brimless cap denoting they’d been freed — for stopping by. You made me forget about the grosbeaks. For a little while, anyway!

The early bird gets the sightings

A common yellowthroat emerges from tree cover May 6, 2021, giving me just enough time to snap a few shots.

Up and about earlier than usual this morning, I headed over to the Mercer Meadows Pole Farm and was rewarded richly. I had barely walked out of the parking lot at Cold Soil and Keefe roads when two tree swallows beckoned me in to one of the best birding locations in Mercer County.

Red-winged blackbirds were trilling away as I turned into the allee to my left. At certain times of year, that pathway over-arched with trees is the hottest spot within the hot spot. Today was one of those days.

Within about five minutes, I’d also spotted song sparrows, a downy woodpecker, a couple of common yellowthroats and, high up in a tree, a pair of Eastern kingbirds who appeared to be very much in love.

I was lucky that one of the yellowthroats, usually elusive little bandits, not only gave his signature witchety-wichety-wichety call but popped into the open long enough for me to get a few quick snaps.

In a span of 90 minutes, I counted 17 species, 18 if you add in the pair of chickadees that I listed as either Carolina or black-capped. The two versions mingle freely in these parts, and they’re too quick for me to type them or even photograph them in the woods.

As I walked out of the allee and into an open field, I was hoping to catch an Eastern meadowlark. That would come on my walk back to the car. Instead, I spotted another pair of goldfinches before glimpsing a couple of sparrows on the ground near an observation deck. I got one poor photo but I did get a great view through the binoculars. With broken ellipses of yellow around their eyes, they were unmistakably savannah sparrows.

I’m fortunate to live within a few miles of the Pole Farm, named for the huge antenna arrays that AT&T placed on the property years ago for trans-Atlantic telephone call transmission. I’m planning a section of the website to highlight birding hot spots, and one of the first entries will certainly be on the “vole farm,” as I call it when the Northern harriers are hunting those small rodents at the park over the winter months.

Home is where the house wrens are

One of the house wrens who settled in our backyard birdhouse chatters away in May 2020.

Spring has sprung here in central New Jersey, and I’ve been on high alert for seasonal visitors who are due to arrive soon, some just passing through and others who will stay awhile.

I was on the back patio the other day when I spotted what I was almost certain was a house wren checking out our small birdhouse where wrens have nested previously. But the little fellow flew off the instant I stood for a closer look.

It seems he came back.

Hoping to lure a mate, this house wren is working hard on his new home May 4, 2021.

The bird house — from which several weeks ago I’d removed the few leftover sticks from last year’s Wrenthwacket* tenants — now has sticks poking out from its sides. A new nest is underway, and this afternoon I spotted a wren popping out of the entry hole.

For the next 20 minutes or so, I stayed on the patio, listening to him chattering away in the trees. It’s a joyous noise, in and of itself but also for affirming the continuum of year-to-year renewal.

Welcome, little wren, and may the girl bird of your dreams find her way to your bachelor pad swinging from our larch tree.

MORNING UPDATE, May 5: When I went out to refill the birdbath just after dawn, the wren was singing lustily from the trees. A short while later, I saw two wrens pop out of the house. I’m not going to pry into what transpired overnight, but it seems Mr. has found his Mrs. I have named them DIdo and Aeneas, and I anticipate an epic year ahead.

*Wrenthwacket is a winking reference to Drumthwacket, the New Jersey governor’s mansion a few miles up the old King’s Highway (U.S. 206) from our home.

The first bird I identified on my own

A tufted titmouse, ready for takeoff from our backyard feeder.

As a kid growing up in northeast Ohio, I knew the basics of the birds that frequented our neighborhood. Mom always pointed them out, marveling at the cardinals and their song, tisk-tisking the raucous blue jays (“those bullies!”), and pointing with delight at the cute house wrens popping in and out of the birdhouse that hung from one of the backyard trees.

Robins and house sparrows were common, and every once in a while we’d see a red-headed woodpecker, validation that the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker was reality-based.

One day in our yard I spotted a gray and white bird with a crested head, like a cardinal only smaller, yet definitely not a cardinal. What was it?

My parents had a bird book on the bookshelves beside the fireplace in the living room. I can’t remember which book it was. The Golden field guide “Birds of North America” published in the mid-1960s is a fair bet, although it doesn’t quite match the vague image lingering in memory. I can’t remember how old I was; six or seven seems a reasonable guess.

I thumbed through the book and discovered the tufted titmouse. You might say I started my life list that day, as it was the first bird I identified on my own, without adult input.

It would take years for my interest in birds to build to the daily duty it is today. I have no recollection of taking any interest in the birds on campus when I was in college or graduate school, and I think the first real interest came during my late 20s and early 30s in Nebraska.

I traveled nearly everywhere in the Cornhusker State in my jobs as AP correspondent and bureau chief in Omaha. One of the most wonderful experiences I had was catching the sandhill cranes congregating along the “mile wide, inch deep” Platte River near Grand Island. I had never seen so many noisy, gawky birds assembled in one place in all my life.

I was also startled on one of my first drives through the Sand Hills in the central part of the state to see white pelicans — how on earth did these sea birds end up in the middle of the continent?

So many birds, so many questions! Just thinking about these early experiences stirs up more memories of my travels, to recall in future days. 🦅