The Merlin Bird ID application is better than meditation, and it is not only for amateur ornithologists

I did everything I can think of to improve my mindfulness. I tried countless meditation applications and breathing exercises to stay in the present, and I always work to improve my mental health.

What helps me stay anchored has nothing to do with all this. It is an application to identify birds.

Cornell Lab of Merlin Bird ID of Ornithology was launched in 2014 to help people identify the birds they see and hear. Thanks to Ebird, the largest database in the world of sounds and photos of birds based on 800 million global observations, the application allows you to record a bird, answer a series of questions or download a photo to name your winged friend. Or you can simply use the application to explore the different birds in your region, no matter where you are in the world, and even if you are offline.

One of my favorite characteristics of Merlin Bird ID is that you can use it to keep track of your bird observations and, like an IRL Pokemon Go, “Collect them all”.

The first time I used the application, I sat on my balcony, I clicked on the green “sound” button and I looked at the Identify the chirping birds and sing in all directions. You can see the different sound frequencies as they appear on a real -time spectrogram, a visual representation of the audio world. The next time I checked the clock, I was shocked to see that an hour had passed. Then I dug my binoculars and let even more time fly.

As all Merlin Bird Ider knows, there is no thrill like pressing the “It’s my bird” button for the first time, and he never ages. From there, you can save your location. The application, in turn, will save your report to improve its performance.

Before a long time, I had noise of different birds memorized. In the morning, I woke up to the sound of an alarm by California Towhee and frankly, yes, annoying the boring fruits of a tree outside my window just while the sun was starting to get up. On the walks in my neighborhood, I would have audit the sound of the cars and the distant construction to hear the melody of the house pinsons mixed with staccato chirping of less goldfinches and bursts of buzzing a pair of mourning doucts religiously parked on electric wires. It was the song that had been the soundtrack of my world, but I had not noticed so far.

On sight, I recognize that I recognize the Bulss with red mustard with their black ridges and their fire engine cheeks, a blush color while waiting to be reproduced in the form of powder. Black Phoebes became known with their soft heads, their statue statutes and their ivory belly. At the Alegeoireoire à Colibri on my balcony, there is a range of endless customers with iridescent gorges in the sunset colors: Anna’s hummingbirds (my favorite, as you can guess), Allen and even rare Rufous, who spend all day fighting for sugar water when you do not look at the food of their magnons.

What is the most exciting is when the Merlin Bird application hears a bird that you cannot see, which gives the impression that it is your mission to chase the treasure. This is often a lesson in patience, because it can take you several attempts to find the singer bird you are looking for. Recently, when he was sitting in a new park for me, the application told me that a Mountain Chickadee was nearby and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to spot it with my binoculars. He ended up on a branch directly above my head, and when I got up to leave, he stole right next to my face as if he were on the joke that it was there all the time.

I have not yet found the blackbird with red wings which always seems to be out of reach, it doesn’t matter where I am in my city, but I console myself with the apparently omniscient herd of common crows (also unjustly called “displeasure”) in my street and the surprising number of noises they can produce.

I also often listen to the comforting hooo of a large horns singing a lullaby of 9:30 p.m. just before the beginning of spring. I like time trips at these moments, although I have encountered retrospectively hilarious conversations that I involuntarily recorded between Birdsong. That said, Merlin Bird ID save your audio recordings but only on your device in the application. To share the recordings with Ebird, you must export them manually and download them.

I am now looking for unexplored wooded spaces to meet new feathered friends, an excuse for forestry swimming, which led me to see the shade of unique blue to a red duck ticket. After a rain storm, I came across a group of acorns peaks with impressive red Mohawks with wet wood with enthusiasm while called each other. Like a conversation between punk beasties during dinner. My region is known for its large herds of Amazonian parrots (and their persistent cries), which I now have the pleasure of seeing closely because they use their clear yellow bills to climb the trees and recover their berries. And once, only once, I caught the rear of a yellow paruline in a nearby watershed park.

Because of this application, I spent more time listening to the world around me and less time in my own head, by swinging between the past and the future. I found myself surrounded and in conversation with nature more than ever. It may be the closest thing we have magic here on earth. Now, this may be the key to anchor: put your buttocks on the ground and take the time to listen to those who sing around you.