Date: 2/13/26 12:14 pm From: Marcus England via groups.io <marcuscengland...> Subject: Re: [LACoBirds] The Merlin/Red-winged Blackbird mystery (solved?)
I find Merlin to be very helpful when I am traveling and don’t know the songs/calls… they need verification, of course. For example, my first outing on my first trip to Europe (Norway), with birds calling everywhere, it picked up a European Greenfinch. Using Merlin helped me to track the bird down and then get a photo. That, and many other things. Now, having been to Europe a few times, but still not knowing the vocalizations off the top of my head, it helps me determine there may be a potential life bird around for me to look for. “Merlin says there’s an [x], now I just have to find it”.
To bring it back to SoCal, I also use it, sometimes, even in areas that I know well if there is a lot of vocalizing going on as it will sometimes pick up songs/calls that I may actually know well, but my brain isn’t picking it up in the cacophony. Quite often, when it alerts me to it, I’m then able to get my focus on it and verify it.
It’s a helpful tool, as long as you understand its limits and don’t take everything it spits out at you as gospel.
Regards,
Marcus
Marcus C. England
Principal
England|Ecology, LLC
Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, California
mcengland.com <http://mcengland.com/> (213) 304-1826
Note: I will be traveling in Australia February 25 - March 14. As always, I will respond as I can, but there will be a significant time difference. The April Kansas trip previously in my signature has been canceled in favor of a very short trip to Sacramento for a training session with the Wetland Training Institute.
> On Feb 13, 2026, at 11:17, Chuck & Lillian via groups.io <misclists...> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
