ML618611909

Age

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Sex

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Observation details

I was going to accept the mystery here, but it looks like Bob has added it to his list so I'll put in all the pros and cons to this ID and people can decide for themselves. This is just to get more earballs on it and I'm not sure I'll even keep it for my personal list if it's confirmed. (My guess is Merlin is making a mistake, but I can't figure out what the call actually is. Kathy Robertson was there as well, knows local birds pretty well by ear, and couldn't place it either.) The bird called a dozen times or so within a 10 minute period. Merlin picked it up as Parula every time. I tried letting Merlin run a long time to see if it would course correct, and also restarted it to refresh. Neither affected the ID, still 100% reported as Parula. I'm kind of used to the mistake birds Merlin shows and this isn't one of them--I'd never even heard of it until today. If you go into the Merlin or All About Birds library and find the Northern Parula Song recording by Gerrit Vyn, Arkansas, March 23, 2005 it's pretty much a dead ringer for how it sounded in person. The call was coming from within the dense shrubs near the fountain, with oaks above. It's typical habitat for warblers staging to get water from the fountain. There's also thrushes, towhees, vireos, and wrens typically in there. I thought maybe it would be the new arrival Swainson's Thrush but I listened to all those calls and songs and none are close. On the con side--Bob's phone didn't pick it up and it was the loudest bird around. Why weren't we both seeing the same result, right or wrong? Second, my phone just updated to the newer Merlin UI, perhaps there are new signature errors in there too? Third, I looked at the spectrogram and it's similar, but not a perfect pattern match like you can sometimes see between your recording and the reference clips. And lastly, my recordings aren't great quality, so I think it will be tough to confirm based on them, but I'll add them anyway. They're closed mondays but open again today so I'm going back for an hour to see if it (whatever it is) is still around. TUESDAY AM update. Spent an hour at the fountain before having to leave for work and did not hear the mystery call.

Technical information

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720 pixels x 900 pixels

Original file size

139.65 KB