01-03: Cornell's Merlin App with Drew Weber

The American Birding Podcast

naswick

Science, Birding, Hobbies, Travel, Birdwatching, Leisure, Aba, Ornithology, Nature, Birds

4.7 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With the ambitious and impressive Merlin app, Cornell Lab of Ornithology will identify your mystery bird photos! Project Manager Drew Weber joins Nate Swick to talk about how it works and what kind of applications this program has for every birder and birdwatcher.

Plus we discuss potential ornithological taxonomic changes coming down the pike, and Nate shares your Ruddy Turnstone stories as we continue to celebrate the 2017 Bird of the Year.

Thanks to Song Bird Coffee for sponsoring this episode! Song Bird Coffee is the gold-standard for shade-grown, environmentally friendly coffee.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I get a large coffee?
0:19.0	Is your coffee destroying bird habitat?
0:22.1	Maybe it's time you switch to ABA songbird coffee, grown on certified bird-friendly farms.
0:27.4	To learn more, visit ABA.org.
0:37.3	Hello and welcome to another episode of the American Birding podcast from the American Birding
0:41.6	Association. I'm your host, Nate Swick, and I am just going to come out and address the elephant
0:47.2	in the room. I know that there are a lot of folks out there feeling overwhelmed, feeling
0:52.4	really frustrated with recent news. I hear you. It's like
0:56.6	it's just one thing after another and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up in the air,
1:02.5	give up. I get it. I get it. But just remember everybody, you can do it. If we learn to identify
1:09.2	two different species of dowager, we can learn to identify
1:13.0	two different species of willet too. I know this to be true. I'm referring, of course, to the
1:20.4	recent release of the first batch of taxonomic proposals considered by the North and Middle America
1:25.0	Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society. This is the group of bird scientists that essentially decides where in your field
1:32.3	guide you can find a given bird. They also do splits in lumps, which is a big deal if you keep a list.
1:37.2	You might get a new species if they split the right one. If you followed along with this
1:41.5	stuff in the past, you might not recognize the AOS or the N-A-M-A-C,
1:47.0	because it used to be the American Ornithologist Union until they were lumped in a bit of unintentional irony,
1:53.0	last year with the Cooper Ornithological Society to form one giant bird science organization to rule them all.
2:00.0	And that was a pretty good idea.
2:01.7	I'm not sure that the American ornithologists Union did a whole lot to increase wages for
2:06.1	American ornithologists.
	...

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