Bird Watching at BCBS

Anne Carter, a recent Working Guest at the Barre campus, identified 67 different bird species within the single month that she was staying with us. These bird species were easily identified just by their sound, thanks to a free phone application.

“The Merlin app did all the identification from the birdsongs,” Anne humbly explained. “I had the easy job of logging them in the eBird app.”

The Merlin app is offered freely by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The application helps users identify birds by sight, sound, or by responding to a series of prompts. Sound ID still makes mistakes, but the 10-year-old application continuously improves thanks to the data submitted to eBird by users like Anne.

Also provided by the Cornell Lab, eBird is an online hub used to store information provided by birders and citizen-scientists. This results in an increasingly massive data set that is being used for scientific research and conservation decisions around the globe.

Our quiet, lush, rural campus, surrounded by dense forests, marshes, and lakes, is an ideal place to watch for and listen to birds throughout the year. Now, thanks to Anne’s diligent effort, we know that five dozen local and migrating bird species can easily be heard here in the Spring.

Next time you’re visiting us in Barre, see how many different birds you can hear singing in the trees and bushes around campus. You might be surprised!