New Technology #1

 Whilst this blog has been dorment, the world has moved on, and things which seemed like science fiction five years ago and now used all the time. 

One of the obvious changes is the rise in wildlife identifation apps and probably the most impressive of those is Merlin:  https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org.

Whilst some bird songs are fairly easy to distinguish - robins, blackbirds, wren - most seem only indentifable by experienced Ornithologists. So Cornell Univesity (https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/) have set out to help answer one of most common questions "what is that bird song?" and best of all it's free (although donations are welcome).

Using a smart phone, whilst the app is open,it detects even the quietest bird song (and amazingly ignores the any background noise).

And this is what it recorded in the fields around south Abingdon:

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The Redstart & Stonechat seem somewhat optimistic and the probability of Redshank in south Abingdon is almost certainly fanciful, but the others are very good identifications. And illustrates that whilst UK birds are declining there is still a diverse range of song birds in the area.

And interesting and tantilising is the thought of skylarks nesting in the fields near where we live.....