Saturday Smile

This week I downloaded Merlin, the app that identifies birds by their calls.

I’ve never been into birding, but on my almost-daily walks — mostly down the same dirt road — I’d hear the same birds over and over and be slightly frustrated that I didn’t know what they were.

The whole thing started a couple of weeks ago because I couldn’t tell if the quartet of black birds camped out on a branch yelling at each other were ravens or crows. So I recorded a voice memo and sent it to my daughter-in-law who is an avid birder. She fed it into her Merlin and reported back: Ravens.

In the last few days my own Merlin has identified the following: red-eyed vireo, chestnut-sided warbler, pine warbler, ovenbird, common yellowthroat, red-breasted nuthatch, gray catbird, and common raven. Who knew?

So I thought about bird songs of my youth, and aside from Free Bird, Fly Like an Eagle, and Songbird, I remembered White Bird, which to me is the quintessential late Sixties song, capturing everything psychedelic and “natural” about the era.

What’s the favorite bird song of your youth? Leave a comment!