21–30 of 52 posts
The Merlin app has transformed my nature/photo walks, and got me interested in birds. I never realized how many unique birds I was hearing as I’d walk through an area until I turned this app on. It opened a whole new awareness, and helped me remember which bird calls go with which species. There’s also something incredibly cool and satisfying and beautiful about the resulting spectrograms. Watching the shape of the b…
(2021)
The Merlin app has transformed my nature/photo walks, and got me interested in birds. I never realized how many unique birds I was hearing as I’d walk through an area until I turned this app on. It opened a whole new awareness, and helped me remember which bird calls go with which species. There’s also something incredibly cool and satisfying and beautiful about the resulting spectrograms. Watching the shape of the b…
> I blame this app for making me buy a birding lens for my camera Haha, same thing, girlfriend installed Merlin on her phone, our walks turned into birdwatching hunts and now I’m eyeing the nice and affordable RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM to make things more interesting. I’m hoping it stops at that, birding lenses are expensive.
The Merlin app has transformed my nature/photo walks, and got me interested in birds. I never realized how many unique birds I was hearing as I’d walk through an area until I turned this app on. It opened a whole new awareness, and helped me remember which bird calls go with which species. There’s also something incredibly cool and satisfying and beautiful about the resulting spectrograms. Watching the shape of the b…
What specs does your birding lens have, if I may ask?
Because it’s an APS-C sensor, it’s a 225-900mm full frame equivalent focal length.
I had tried the Fuji 70-300 with a 1.4X teleconverter before that, and while it’s a nice lens in a small package, I wad unhappy with the reach. The 150-600 is pretty great so far, but is not good in low light.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I blame this app for making me buy a birding lens for my camera Haha, same thing, girlfriend installed Merlin on her phone, our walks turned into birdwatching hunts and now I’m eyeing the nice and affordable RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM to make things more interesting. I’m hoping it stops at that, birding lenses are expensive.
I made a choice to make birdwatching an interest I immerse myself with while there. Basically meaning, I prefer to watch birds through binocculars, in the moment, and keep them in memory, more than capturing the moment for later. I am not against the idea of photographing birds as such, I just realized that in most cases, they will remain small even with very expensive lenses, and the effort to capture really great b…
I don’t think I would have invested in a birding lens if I wasn’t already deep into photography, but it’s possible to get a reasonable starter kit for $2K or less if the goal isn’t to make 30” prints.
It’s still nothing to sneeze at, but those $10K lenses aren’t necessary to get some really great results for hobby purposes.
The challenge of getting the shots is part of what makes the process enjoyable and the resulting photos extremely rewarding. It also lets me explore in far more detail once I get home. I brought home a 40MP photo of a cardinal fully filling the frame today, and it’s pretty incredible zooming up on the plumage, seeing the intricacies of their talons, etc.
With that said, I completely respect the non-photography approach and do think that the gear gets distracting at times.
The Merlin app has transformed my nature/photo walks, and got me interested in birds. I never realized how many unique birds I was hearing as I’d walk through an area until I turned this app on. It opened a whole new awareness, and helped me remember which bird calls go with which species. There’s also something incredibly cool and satisfying and beautiful about the resulting spectrograms. Watching the shape of the b…
> I blame this app for making me buy a birding lens for my camera Haha, same thing, girlfriend installed Merlin on her phone, our walks turned into birdwatching hunts and now I’m eyeing the nice and affordable RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM to make things more interesting. I’m hoping it stops at that, birding lenses are expensive.
Still seems like a good place to start because it’ll make you extremely aware of everything you want the next bigger lens to do ;)
Birding is what got me into field recording, which is another fun hobby among the far-too-many that I don't have enough time for. I'll save you some trouble: get a Zoom F3 or Sound Devices MixPre-3 II and a Sennheiser MKE 600 plus something like a Rode Blimp with the big fuzzy "dead cat" for wind noise...or two DPA 4060 -- get the DPA KIT-4060-OC-SMK stereo kit from StudioCare or Thomann because those XLR to MicroDot adapters are expensive and the knock-offs aren't as good...not a worthwhile compromise if you're looking at spending this much -- and put those on a DIY Jecklin disk for ambient recording or a parabolic for highly directional sound + another on the handle for ambient.
https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/resources/audio-recording-ge... has more info on microphones and parabolics if you're looking to get into this, but do go out and spend a few dozen hours in the field first before dropping a ton of money on your new hobby.
I've always thought that these apps are missing a feature-set: Manipulation of the sound clip prior to identification. In both this app and BirdNET the selection always selects from the lowest recorded frequency to the highest -- I would like to be able to select the frequency band I'm interested in. Maybe first select time, then put corners on the rectangle to be shaped. The sound file passed to the identifier would…
So funny to see this! I've had the pleasure of working with Grant (one of the lead researchers on Merlin Sound ID) on other porjects in the past! The whole team is kind-hearted and incredibly smart. Sound ID is one of the very few research projects that make me instantly smile hearing about in the news. I've always been impressed with the responsibility that the Cornell Lab and Macaulay Library give toward involving…
What is interesting to me, though, is that they mention the importance of more precise time labeling of sounds. Previous BirdCLEF Kaggle competitions just provided many-minute long recordings where all that is known (labelled) is that a certain list of species are to be heard, but not when in the recording. That’s not too useful as training data, as they point out in the article:
This can lead to problems: if other species are singing in the same recording, the model will erroneously call all species in the recording a White-breasted Nuthatch, leading to false predictions.The Merlin app has transformed my nature/photo walks, and got me interested in birds. I never realized how many unique birds I was hearing as I’d walk through an area until I turned this app on. It opened a whole new awareness, and helped me remember which bird calls go with which species. There’s also something incredibly cool and satisfying and beautiful about the resulting spectrograms. Watching the shape of the b…
Now I’m imaging a crossover with this and Pokémon Go. Gamified bird watching!