Apologies if I've misunderstood any of the group protocols, please let me know if so.
Thanks, Bill Isaacs El Cerrito
Sat Oct 17 2026 8:45pm
Warm evening with the windows open, sitting in the house. My wife alerted me to a sound outside and we went to our deck facing south. The house is adjacent to the Hillside Natural space behind Ganges Ave in El Cerrito. I opened Merlin and started recording. She saw the silhouette outline of two large birds heading in the direction of San Francisco so SSW. They were gliding not much higher than roof height, so below the adjacent hillside tree levels. It was dark already so no features visible, but size at least in the vulture or large owl or large waterbird category. We suspected some migratory flyover, but we also think they must have perched nearby, because we heard them for a solid minute on the deck plus the time it took to get out there. (Don't know but it feels like a plain fly by would have gone faster.) Merlin did not make any identification suggestions.
I got the latest BirdNet Live app, which will run the ID algorithms on audio files as well as listening live. It also didn't make a suggestion with the default settings. I completely removed the location filter, and it made one suggestion: a 59% match to a Black Kite. I went through the audio clips within Merlin for that species and it wasn't obvious to me that any was a good comparison to what we heard (plus they were all from Africa, but I recognize this may be a stray which explains why I didn't get an ID from Merlin). I reduced the probability filter to the minimum, but BirdNet Live didn't make any other suggestions. It's my first time using this app, so I don't know if I missed turning any knobs that would have helped.
I'm a retired computer physicist, and have programmed my share of signal processing software, so I know very well how the audio ID works, its limitations, etc. Whenever I get a surprise match I try to find comparison audio to learn from. But here is a great case for human expertise, so I'm happy to consult a real person for this!
I didn't know how to usefully navigate eBird to see if anyone reported something that aligns with the above. I did ask one of the AIs if there were any rare bird reports on eBird or Facebook near our area from that timeframe, and it couldn't find any.
We're excited to learn what we heard, even if it somehow turns out to be something common. I haven't tried cleaning up the audio and running it again. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
