Finding things to bird (and a caution on Merlin)

For folks who haven't played with it, the eBird target species list can be quite useful for finding species to chase and places to bird. I took a good chunk of the summer more or less off birding (because: quiet and boring), and with fall looming with shorebird migration started, I decided to play "what species can I find that should have been on my year list months ago?" -- and top of the list was Osprey.  So I headed out to where I've seen osprey before, because there were also a few other species that might be findable there. 

And wouldn't you know it, I sat down, started watching, and within 5 minutes, the local osprey flew past about 25 feet up, about 50 feet away from me. And then to make sure I noticed, he circled past and flew by again, and for good measure, did a loop around me, and then flew off. This sort of thing falls into my "God exists and has a sense of humor" karma bucket.

Also was able to nail one other species while watching -- Heerman's Gull. And sicne I take lots of pictures of really far away birds in case looking in Lightroom can help me ID them, two OTHER species were added to my year list: Marbled Murrelet and Pigeon Guillemot. Three of those four are common to that location, so no huge surprises, and the latter not too uncommon. 

Not a bad hour sitting in the sun shooting images of things (except for the big hunk of sensor dust... whoops)

Also, as a reminder not to trust Merlin TOO much: a week ago I was out and about shooting at another location when a flock of small birds flew up out of the tide pools. "Peeps" my brain thought, and I took a bunch of photos hoping to get a decent ID of them once I got home. When I got home, I found: European Starlings. Which shouldn't have surprised me there. Oh well. 

And then, for giggles, I grabbed a screen shot of the starlings blown up in Lightroom and fed it to Merlin to see what it thought. It was absolutely, 100% convinced it as a Parasitic Jaegar. 

A great reminder not to give Merlin too much authority in your ID decision making. It can be a super useful tool, but it passes itself off as a lot more certain than it should in many situations. (for those that don’t remember, a few months back I went into a deep dive into the technology behind the Merlin app and other identification tools, and ended up realizing that Merlin presents itself as a lot more authoritative than it should. If you want to see the details on this, check out my notes around Merlin amd the Haikubox ID system)