I hope everybody in the world knows about Merlin, the amazing free app that helps identify birds by sound or photos. I've had Merlin for years, and I love it.
I've been a casual birder for many years; I don't have a life list or spend much time trying to tell similar birds apart, I just enjoy seeing them, and I love the way I've learned, a bit, how different birds' flight patterns look different and can help identify them. I love so many different birds - shorebirds especially, pelicans, black oyster catchers, godwits and curlews; herons and egrets; quail - I love quail so much; phoebes; the famous and unexpected parrots.
Lately I've been watching quite a lot of bird video at Explore.org. Here again, Cornell Lab gives wonderful joyous gifts to the world: they provide the Panama hummingbird feeder cam and the Panama fruit feeder cam. But there are lots of great bird cams from other organizations, and lately I've been glued to the streams from the Owl Research Institute - there were some fantastic great horned owl chicks earlier this year, and I've utterly fallen in love with the burrowing owls.
The ways these wonderful organizations bring us closer to the delightful creatures around us is a source of unending joy for me.
Just a few days ago, I was sitting at my desk and heard an intriguing bird call. I opened up Merlin and set my phone near the window and waited to find out what I was hearing. It only took a few seconds for Merlin to correctly identify the osprey in the livestream I was watching.
Hah.