Merlin Bird App
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.labs.merlinbirdid.app&pcampaignid=web_share
shazzam for birds! free app. just who is the phantom tweetle twerper lurking in yonder thicket? the one spewing up its lungs in a joyful bildungsroman sonata!
or equally frequently, a raucous, repetitive, self congratulatory croak… i’m looking at you ‘european carrion crow’
this morning up at castle hill there were goldfinches, robins, wrens, a plethora of assorted tits, crows, a yellow legged gull and errm a dunnock
i can recognise all of these birds from their plumage as they flit from branch to branch… excepting the dunnock, which i know to be a small drab bird of little import
… yet haven’t got a bean what many of them sound like! so of course not wishing to encourage further use of smart phones, dummies, pacifiers, for dummies
but discernment is knowledge… a joy to close the eyes and listen to the exquisite melodic fluency… occasionally opening one eye to squint down at phone to see who that be
… also, astonishingly sophisticated, i cupped my hands and blew a flawless clarion conch owl hooot… ‘greater spotted berk’, but noo matches for long eared screech owl?!
………………….
in nepal, teaching the kids in each village how to owl hoot, a trail of too whit to woo all the way up the valley, FADING AWAY INto the hills