Thursday, April 29, 2010

iPhone app for bird watchers

this afternoon i was weeding again...trying to catch up with the henbit that has enveloped many parts of my poor neglected flower garden: i know it's in there somewhere! i did leave a little of the weed in front of the rabbit's door, as its supposed to be cold tonight. there were a lot of birds out there with me...most of them i recognized, but the little sparrows are hard to differentiate: they are all so stripe-y in browns and beiges...then one popped up on the tutuer in front of me and sang a fantastic song! i was determined to i.d. this one since i had such a clear view, and pulled out my iPhone and opened my birds app. i knew this bird was some type of sparrow, and since it sang, i figured it could possibly be a 'song sparrow', so i typed that into the search box. the photo that turned up looked like the little guy and it had a song sound sample...which i pushed. the little song sparrow flew right at me and tried to land on my arm! after i screamed (not too loudly!), it veered left and landed on a branch above me and belted out it's song. what just happened? i hit the song button again on the app, and once again he tried to land on me, but choose to land near me instead, and sing the same song again! turns out the bird is attracted to the recording: some bird watchers actually use their iPhone bird apps to attract birds down from trees...not me, though: the little song sparrow seemed genuinely disappointed there was no mate there.

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