Date: 2/13/26 11:51 am From: Chuck & Lillian via groups.io <misclists...> Subject: Re: [LACoBirds] The Merlin/Red-winged Blackbird mystery (solved?)
Tom:
I'm not at all surprised. According to Merlin,
both Ospreys and Northern Cardinals live in my
back yard bougainvillea bush in the north central
San Fernando Valley., alongside the abundance of
House Sparrows and House Finches. I've never seen or heard the Osprey or NoCa.
I don't trust Merlin on anything it claims but I
can't hear on playback or doesn't sufficiently
register on the moving sonogram to be noticeable.
The Mockingbird error rate doesn't surprise me
either. Merlin is essentially a Large Language
Module, except the languages are avian. When data
is still insufficient,
mis-identifications/mis-interpretations/mis-understands
can still occur. (You can certainly see this on
Google AI; just pressure it a little.) I read
somewhere that when they introduced Merlin to the
US west, some time after introducing in the US
east, there were a lot of ID's ascribed to
eastern birds. which, I think, began to dwindle thereafter.
Evidentially Merlin has not yet the sound-data
base to deal with the Mockingbird's ability to
mimic, nor reliably ID those marginal,
nearly-to-fully inaudible chirps. Maybe they
could install a little algorithm & window that
shows the probability of their ID being correct.
I don't use it much, and I never figured out a
way to inform it that their ID was spurious.
Chuck Almdale
North Hills
>Hi,
>This morning, while walking Duke on our daily
>bird tour of Wheeler Park I heard some
>Red-winged Blackbirds. I did not see any. I also
>heard and saw Starlings. There were no
>Red-winged Blackbirds. A light bulb went on over
>my head. This weekend I was a cattle lot in the
>Antelope Valley, where there were many hundreds
>each of Starlings, Brewer's, and Red-winged
>Blackbirds. I suspect that Merlin "hears
>Red-winged Blackbirds everywhere" because it is
>hearing Starlings imitating Red-winged Blackbirds. Â
>Last Friday while looking for the Scott's Oriole
>in Orange County I stood there and watched a
>Northern Mockingbird imitate Cassin's Kingbird
>and White-breasted Nuthatch, and Merlin
>identified them as said species. I wonder if
>looking at the spectrograms would detect any
>difference between a Mockingbird and the species that it is imitating?
>Up until now I had always assumed that there
>would be something on the spectrogram that gives
>it away but now I suspect that not to be the case.
>Tom
>
>Tom Miko
>Claremont 91711
>909.241.3300
>"We lose a rifle and get punished. They lose a
>war and get promoted."--Ben Edwards
