Garden birds today according to my Merlin app

[Delphigirl]

The Birds in my garden are all out and enjoying the breezy sunshine this morning. This is what I’ve caught in 16 minutes… would love to see others’ lists!
pS the chiff chaff is particularly noisy

@CatsLikeBoxes you've also picked up the blackcap as well which is a type of warbler. A very lyrical slightly deeper song than the garden warbler.
I picked up a Redwing this morning. They normally over winter here & I've seen them in snowy weather in a group looking for food on the ground.

One year a whole group of redwings descended on my holly bush in winter, but I've never seen them since.
I used to put out all sorts of bird food in the past and had a huge variety of birds visit my garden, but I got through sacks of seed and softbill food etc and have less disposable money these days.
Though I'm out in the semi countryside at the moment so it's nice to pick up a different selection.

Thank you for recommending this app. It has made my walks in the Peak District even more enjoyable. Today we heard a skylark which I wouldn't have known without it. 🥰

You have made my day with this app, for years I listened to a specific birdsong and had no idea what it was. I asked people about it and no one knew (obviously I know uncultured people). It was starting to become an obsession.

Then one day listening to radio four and a short show came on about the bird song of the great tit and yes, it was the squeaky wheel I’d been trying to identify for years!

I have the app downloaded and I’m waiting for the squeaky wheel to confirm it’s a Great Tit. I am so ridiculously excited.

I’m so pleased this thread has introduced more people to the app! I get so much pleasure from it 💕💕

If it sounds like smaller squeaky wheel or gate it’s a coal tit.

Oh no! So radio 4 may have led me up the wrong path. I am going to have to stalk the squeaky wheel birds. Or are there more than one type of tit that has a squeaky wheel?

The great tit says " teacher teacher"!

Mine wasn’t that good at picking much up today. Lots more I could hear that Merlin didn’t.

Love Merlin, mostly correct but the other day it picked up a raven! Surely you don’t get many wild ravens? (I’m in SE)

There’s a distribution map here, so looks like Kent coast possible, east Anglia unlikely but it says they’re spreading their range east.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/raven

Oh I’ve got ravens every day, they nest in trees beside me. Oxfordshire. And rooks. And crows. And carrion crows.And jackdaws. It’s corvid heaven around here!

Sorry, I was unclear - most of the squeaky wheels are indeed great tits, but coal tits make a similar sound just a bit higher and faster, as befits their smaller size. It’s quite fun if you’re somewhere that’s got both to see if you can tell the difference.

Phew. I look forward then to checking out all the squeaky wheels in my area. I am so excited!

Popped on to say thank you, never heard of this app, just downloaded & had an evening listen in the garden. Looking forward to going for our walk tomorrow in the nature reserve 🐦‍⬛

We have loads of ravens (Herts).

The red dot on that one shows that Merlin is unsure of the identification (usually because it is unexpected for the location), so you can use your common sense or other sources to check whether it is correct.

I believe a red dot means a bird is rare.
I've just double checked this in the Merlin Faq's
I've had a couple come up on my recordings.
I do have my doubts as to whether this is totally accurate. I have a very noisy quite strident Blackcap in the garden.
But when it sings the garden warbler seems to pipe up too. It's often difficult to distinguish between the two.

Based on what I’ve observed, I think the red dot means rare for the area/time of year. The app detected a rook for me yesterday, which came with a red dot. Rooks are not particularly rare, but they avoid my town and the surrounding areas like the plague, just because they don’t like steep hills. So hearing one in my garden is definitely an unusual thing = a red dot on the app.

I’d never heard of those but it’s not impossible in Suffolk - they’re winter migrants along the east coast

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplandlongspur

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/lapland-bunting

The rspb website is good for info including distribution maps

There is one very short sound on the recording that it identifies as being a Longspur.

I think if there was one locally then the birders would be here trying to spot it like they are when the waxwings show up which is why I doubt it. When the White Tails were here last spring all the local FB pages were full of photos, there hasn't been a single mention or photo of a Longspur locally at all.

It recognised a gull! I didn’t even notice it until the app picked it up, but did then hear and see it. No idea if it got the right variety, it was very high up!

I hear my first willow warblers and reed warblers of the year today - not in my garden, on a reserve with a reed bed of course. So many of them!

I've been travelling around a bit in the past two weeks. I've seen (or Merlin has picked up):

Sandwich terns
Gadwall (both Poole harbour)

Male Hen Harrier
Red Grouse
Dipper
Oyster catcher
Curlew (Yorkshire Dales).

On a local walk I picked up another black cap (saw it too) and on the school walk this morning I've just recorded one at the front of my house in the lane. This bird used to appear with a red dot beside it, but it may be less uncommon now as I'm certainly hearing more of them, and the red dot has disappeared.

This morning's offering is here.The one cut off at the bottom is a goldfinch.

I was just in the middle of a colony of puffins, guillemots and razorbills. The noise was extraordinary, but the app didn't pick them up at all! Got a stonechat, whimbrel, pied avocet and peregrine falcon on the trip, though, alongside the various gulls.