Steve and Judy's Travels!

Hey, I figured something out.

There is this cool birding app for the phone called Merlin.  Turn it on and let it listen.  It picks out bird calls and identifies them.  It’s fairly new technology.  It’s not always right, and it takes some discretion and skepticism when evaluating its results, but it’s another good tool in the kit.

I was surprised however, while sitting there listening to a mockingbird and Merlin wasn’t identifying it.  A singing mockingbird isn’t that hard to I.D.  How can an app that can pick out a birdsong I can barely hear, or identify a little pip from the bushes that sounds like every other little pip, not identify a mockingbird, one of our most conspicuous birds?  I wondered about that a little bit but didn’t obsess over it and let it go.

Recently however, while I was again listening to a mockingbird sing, the explanation just came to me.  That blinding flash of the obvious!  Northern mockingbirds sing 200 different songs.  Mockingbirds are so good at what they do, if they trained Merlin to recognize every song a mockingbird sings, there would hardly be any other birds left to identify.  Merlin would think every bird it heard, whatever the location or habitat, was a Mockingbird!  Merlin can leave the really easy bird I.D.s to us to figure out on our own and focus on the ones we might need help with.

Freddy is actually a Gulf Coast Toad.  This is a picture of him from last year.

There were a lot of “Freddys” around last year.  There was only one in the puddle at a time, but there might have been another 5 or 6 around the yard.  Last year was an unusual year for these little toads; we’ve never seen so many before.

This year, the population was way down.  Hardly any toad sightings at all, and none of them ever ventured up onto our porch or into the fountain.  We don’t know anything about how or why the toad population fluctuates from year to year.  Just because Freddy didn’t come back this year doesn’t mean we won’t get a Freddy again.  Maybe he got a better offer and spent this last summer buried in the mud by a pond somewhere next to Mrs. Freddy and will pop up on our porch again next year.  Or maybe Freddy Junior.

And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  All summer. 

But Freddy didn’t come back.  Remember Freddy?  There in his puddle to brighten every morning last summer.

Sometimes in one corner.  Sometimes the other.

This summer.  No Freddy the entire time.

A fountain with water, but no frog.

https://vitalfarms.com/farm/dry-creek/