Latest / Bird Dogs and Big Game / (Ep.62) eBird, Merlin & Tracking Waterfowl Migration with Orin Robinson & Mitch Barry (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

Transcript

(Ep.62) eBird, Merlin & Tracking Waterfowl Migration with Orin Robinson & Mitch Barry (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) · Bird Dogs and Big Game

• 1:08
  Tyce Erickson: Hey folks, welcome to The Bird Dog Podcast.
• 1:11
  Tyce Erickson: Today on the podcast I have Orin Robinson and Mitch Barry with me.
• 1:15
  Tyce Erickson: I'm excited for this podcast just offline.
• 1:18
  Tyce Erickson: We're just talking a little bit about what they do with website.
• 1:22
  Tyce Erickson: I guess it is an app, eBird also is an app, is that correct?
• 1:26
  Tyce Erickson: And then we have the Merlin app and this is a this is kind of special to me.
• 1:30
  Tyce Erickson: I love birds obviously being a bird dog trainer and And also, I...
• 1:35
  Tyce Erickson: Growing up, I loved birds.
• 1:37
  Tyce Erickson: I had the bird books and know the different birds around me and the sounds that they make and it's been fun to start teaching my kids those things so I'm excited to talk about what you guys have going on and you can share with me and the audience more things about birds and you guys both have dogs too and and sound like you do some hunting so we want to hear a little bit about those but.
• 1:59
  Tyce Erickson: Orin and Mitch, thanks for coming on today.
• 2:01
  Orin Robinson: Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.
• 2:03
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, I appreciate you guys' time. So Orin, let's start with you.
• 2:06
  Tyce Erickson: Let's go ahead and jump into, give us a background of who you are, where you came, you know, you don't have to get into details, but kind of where you came from, you know, did you come from a hunting family, or how'd you got into this whole bird thing?
• 2:20
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, so I grew up in Mobile, Alabama. I'm originally from Alabama. I did grow up hunting.
• 2:27
  Orin Robinson: My dad and grandfather were big hunters. My uncle, you know, was more fishing.
• 2:35
  Orin Robinson: So we were fished a lot.
• 2:36
  Orin Robinson: I mean, that's really where I learned to kind of enjoy the outdoors, love being outside.
• 2:44
  Orin Robinson: And in college, I learned that there are people who make careers out of this, you know, learned about ecology and all those questions you ask as a hunter, you know, why are the birds over there?
• 2:57
  Orin Robinson: Or why am I catching fish over here instead of over there, it looks the exact same.
• 3:01
  Orin Robinson: Questions like that, there's folks who make careers trying to answer them.
• 3:05
  Orin Robinson: And that's kind of what got me on this path.
• 3:08
  Orin Robinson: So I did a PhD at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and I ended up here at the Lab of Ornithology.
• 3:16
  Orin Robinson: And, you know, I studied bird populations, I do a lot of waterfowl management with our data in eBird that maybe we'll talk about a little bit later.
• 3:25
  Tyce Erickson: Absolutely. And you guys are at Cornell, right?
• 3:27
  Tyce Erickson: That's where that's, is that who you're employed by, is Cornell?
• 3:31
  Orin Robinson: Yes.
• 3:32
  Tyce Erickson: Okay. Okay. Cool. So did you grew up, sorry, yeah, so did you always just have a love for, I guess you grew up in a hunting family, you always had a love for birds in the outdoors, sounds like we're all cut out of the same fabric.
• 3:45
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, definitely.
• 3:46
  Orin Robinson: Even a lot of our, my uncle likes to say most of our fishing trips ended up being bird-watching trips because the fish weren't cooperating we would just enjoy words that
• 3:57
  Tyce Erickson: still ask you That's awesome. Mitch, tell us about you.
• 4:01
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, so I grew up very much in a hunting family.
• 4:04
  Mitch Barry: Duck hunting in particular, that's where I spend most of my time in the fall, kind of started to get into birds through that.
• 4:10
  Mitch Barry: So I grew up on the South Shore of Lake Ontario hunting kind of this like expansive of cattail marsh system with some pretty big water, so a variety of waterfowl was always a big interest to me.
• 4:23
  Mitch Barry: Words of close to 30 species through our area every year.
• 4:25
  Mitch Barry: And that was always a really like intriguing piece of the hunting to me.
• 4:29
  Mitch Barry: And that started to expand more into the broader birds, other birds that were in the marsh with us.
• 4:34
  Mitch Barry: And I have a couple of family members that are really big into the birding scene.
• 4:38
  Mitch Barry: So that kind of was a nice transfer to spend.
• 4:41
  Mitch Barry: You know, you can only hunt ducks for 60 days a year where I'm from.
• 4:44
  Mitch Barry: So you had to do something else, the other 300.
• 4:47
  Mitch Barry: And that's kind of what got me down this path eventually.
• 4:51
  Mitch Barry: Through some connections, I was able to do some internships at the Cornell Lab and work on the Merlin Bird ID app way back in its like beginning stages, whether that was working with some of our top backend engineers with, you know, the machine learning models or annotating photos and audio recordings that would then be later used to train some of the features in the app that we'll talk about in a little bit.
• 5:14
  Mitch Barry: And that eventually led to me working here kind of as a I'm part of the outdoor community outreach for Merlin, but then also my main job is to focus on developing a video contributor community within what we would call the Macaulay Library at the lab, which is the database which a lot of the data that's stored to train Merlin and eBird comes from.
• 5:36
  Mitch Barry: So it's all kind of tied together, but it all started in a duck blind and that's where, that's probably my original passion before birding.
• 5:44
  Tyce Erickson: Who funds your guys' research? Is it Cornell?
• 5:48
  Tyce Erickson: And then the government funds Cornell to do that?
• 5:50
  Tyce Erickson: Do you have any idea where that money comes from? Just curious.
• 5:56
  Orin Robinson: For me, so most of my projects are funded by, you know, like, for example, I'm working on a project right now with the Sea Duck Joint Venture, which is part of the U.S.
• 6:10
  Orin Robinson: Fish and Wildlife Service.
• 6:13
  Orin Robinson: And I received funds from them to do specific research for them.
• 6:19
  Orin Robinson: It's, you know, it's often groups like that, whether it be government or non-government.
• 6:24
  Orin Robinson: For the Merlin side of it, you know, the lab is also partially donor funded as well.
• 6:32
  Orin Robinson: So there are a lot of donors that will donate to the lab for specific
• 6:37
  Tyce Erickson: projects. and I think I did see.
• 6:41
  Orin Robinson: And
• 6:41
  Tyce Erickson: there's places on, are there places on Merlin and eBird where you can donate to the research?
• 6:48
  Orin Robinson: Yep.
• 6:51
  Tyce Erickson: Orin, since this is The Bird Dog Podcast, let's give us a little background of your bird dogs in your life.
• 6:56
  Tyce Erickson: What did you start out with? What do you have now?
• 6:59
  Tyce Erickson: And let's talk dogs for a minute for fun.
• 7:01
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, I have hunted with some very good dogs, including Mitch's dog.
• 7:08
  Orin Robinson: And I can't say that I had anything to do with any of them being as good as they are.
• 7:14
  Orin Robinson: My current dog, the small Münsterländer, she's a beautiful dog, she's a great family pet, loves to be outside, loves to find birds.
• 7:24
  Orin Robinson: I does not like to pick them up and bring them back to me.
• 7:27
  Orin Robinson: But, you know, we'd have a lot of fun, regardless.
• 7:30
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah. How old is she?
• 7:33
  Orin Robinson: She's five.
• 7:34
  Tyce Erickson: Five years old, okay.
• 7:36
  Tyce Erickson: So do you hunt her primarily with upland game or what do you what do you do with her primarily?
• 7:41
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, when we go it's upland game so there's you know some some stocked pheasants here that will hunt, there's grouse around although we're usually pretty unsuccessful.
• 7:52
  Orin Robinson: With that she she can point them it's whether or not they're they're cooperative and yeah and I can make the Make it work for us.
• 8:03
  Tyce Erickson: Make the shot. Yeah. Is it rough grouse you're hunting there, I assume?
• 8:07
  Orin Robinson: Yes, yeah. But no, she's good at finding them.
• 8:11
  Tyce Erickson: That's awesome. What was your first dog that you had grown up?
• 8:16
  Orin Robinson: So we never really had many hunting dogs growing up, but we did have a lot of dogs. We had, you know, we had a great German Shepherd when I was young. It was a fantastic dog.
• 8:28
  Orin Robinson: We've had a black lab, we've had, gosh, we had some other smaller dogs, mutts, great dogs, just family dogs.
• 8:39
  Orin Robinson: We had a golden retriever before this Münsterländer who was... She was great as well, you know, but none of them were hunting dogs. All the dogs I've hunted with have been fun.
• 8:51
  Orin Robinson: When I was in college, my roommate had a really good black lab that we would hunt with.
• 8:57
  Orin Robinson: It was fantastic. I used to like to work with her a lot, but she,
• 9:02
  Tyce Erickson: you know, she was a lot better than I am, that's for sure. So she was pretty well.
• 9:09
  Tyce Erickson: Started working with her so I can't take any credit for any of that.
• 9:14
  Tyce Erickson: What, what, how did, how did you get in, why did you decide to go out to a small Münsterländer?
• 9:18
  Orin Robinson: You know, I, I did a lot of reading on that and it was the versatility, it was the key thing, you know, not that, not that we duck hunt with her.
• 9:30
  Orin Robinson: We're still working on that, even though she's five, we're still working trying to get that retrieve done.
• 9:37
  Orin Robinson: You always come across the off switch. People say they have an off switch.
• 9:42
  Orin Robinson: I have known folks with German short hair pointers that just bounce off the walls.
• 9:47
  Orin Robinson: My wife was not into a bouncing off the walls kind of dog.
• 9:51
  Tyce Erickson: Sure.
• 9:52
  Orin Robinson: And everything pointed to Münsterländer being a great in-the-house kind of dog and she absolutely is.
• 10:00
  Orin Robinson: She's a bigger couch potato than I am when we're inside.
• 10:04
  Tyce Erickson: Okay.
• 10:05
  Orin Robinson: But she has tons of energy when we're out. She really is a genuine on-off switch.
• 10:10
  Orin Robinson: She hits the door, she's ready to roll.
• 10:15
  Tyce Erickson: If you tried force fetching her at all or do the train retrieve, are you familiar with that or have you tried that with her?
• 10:22
  Orin Robinson: I am. We have restarted that recently.
• 10:26
  Orin Robinson: I don't know that I am good enough at it, honestly, to force fetch her myself.
• 10:32
  Orin Robinson: I think that's something I absolutely have to go over. And right now, most folks are a lot.
• 10:40
  Orin Robinson: In that phase with training, I'd have to wait till spring or summer to get some
• 10:45
  Tyce Erickson: of that. Sure, yeah.
• 10:46
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, I would say to clean that up, the force vet should help out with that.
• 10:49
  Tyce Erickson: But if you've never done one...
• 10:51
  Tyce Erickson: You know, a done one, I definitely have someone that helps you out that's gone through that process, because sometimes you do have to break down the will of that dog, you know, to get him to retrieve, and the retrieve can almost be sometimes negative for a little bit, as you're making the dog use its mouth, and then you got to kind of finish coming throughout on top, you know, so, and build that fun.
• 11:12
  Orin Robinson: Right now, we're at a point where I can give her a dummy and she will hold it and let me walk away and then she'll bring it to me.
• 11:22
  Tyce Erickson: Working on some hold work with her. Yeah, okay, cool.
• 11:28
  Tyce Erickson: All right, Mitch, tell us about your dog background.
• 11:32
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, so... I grew up in a lab family.
• 11:35
  Mitch Barry: I think that kind of comes with the duck hunting background.
• 11:37
  Mitch Barry: So I've got a six-year-old female black lab English-bred at the moment. She's a great dog.
• 11:44
  Tyce Erickson: What's her name?
• 11:45
  Mitch Barry: Great house dog, Riley.
• 11:47
  Tyce Erickson: Right. Did she come from any big name kennel that you're aware of?
• 11:51
  Mitch Barry: I know the cattle kind of she I don't think it's like super big name I can say it if you want. It came from Iron Spike Kennels in upstate New York. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Mitch Barry: So she's a great, great lab, good bloodline.
• 12:05
  Tyce Erickson: Cool.
• 12:06
  Mitch Barry: And, but yeah, she's a hardworking dog. She's super laid back and chill at the house.
• 12:10
  Mitch Barry: But as soon as you take her out, she's all game. And yeah, I don't know.
• 12:14
  Mitch Barry: I've been hunting her since, you know, she was one and she's been a great dog ever since.
• 12:19
  Mitch Barry: And, you know, I focus on.
• 12:21
  Mitch Barry: We do have a fair amount of stock pheasants that get put in near the house, so a lot of days we'll be a duck hunt in the morning and then we'll walk for some pheasants in the afternoon, and I wouldn't say she's a pointing dog, but if I can stick with her, she'll put them up, so that kind of comes with the lab.
• 12:42
  Tyce Erickson: Sure. You guys had hunting labs growing up then the whole time?
• 12:46
  Mitch Barry: Oh, yeah.
• 12:47
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah. We've.
• 12:48
  Mitch Barry: I think pretty much over the course of the last like 40 years we've had just black lab after black lab after black lab.
• 12:55
  Mitch Barry: This is the first female we've had ever and I you know a lot of times you hear about you know male versus female there's kind of that discussion and went with a female this time and I don't you know growing up with male labs I mean they were super sweet and but she's super sweet too and she's working hard and it doesn't have that you know lack of drive or anything so so far so good
• 13:16
  Tyce Erickson: That's awesome.
• 13:17
  Tyce Erickson: Do you self-train your dogs or have you guys just self-trained or do you have, do you have, okay, cool.
• 13:23
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, so this is usually how it's worked in the past as we would get a dog as the previous dog is starting to phase out.
• 13:30
  Mitch Barry: It's kind of like a little bit of like a spark their interest in it and get the training started.
• 13:34
  Mitch Barry: Fortunately, we weren't able to do that on the last one, so there's a little bit of a gap.
• 13:38
  Mitch Barry: But yeah, a lot of, you know, a lot of duck wings on dummies, you know.
• 13:42
  Mitch Barry: Tossing them back in the cattails, using a sporting dog, a little bee-proofer training, but try to really work the instant more than a field training side of things.
• 13:53
  Mitch Barry: And that so far is working really well. She wants to stay close.
• 13:57
  Mitch Barry: She doesn't roam very far, so there's not a lot of that.
• 13:59
  Mitch Barry: She doesn't bust out right when you go to shoot.
• 14:01
  Mitch Barry: She's pretty good about staying on the shore, and then you'd send her.
• 14:05
  Mitch Barry: And at this point, I think she's going to stick that way.
• 14:08
  Tyce Erickson: Cool, man. Awesome. Good job.
• 14:10
  Tyce Erickson: Is she more of the English builder, like the British lines or what's her look like?
• 14:18
  Tyce Erickson: Is she kind of that short, the stockier look? I would say she's pretty short and stockier.
• 14:23
  Tyce Erickson: Okay, so that English. Yeah,
• 14:26
  Mitch Barry: no, no, she's as short and stockier as they would come, I think. Yeah, okay.
• 14:31
  Tyce Erickson: Good. Cool. That's awesome. Well, thanks for sharing about your guys' dogs.
• 14:36
  Tyce Erickson: A little bit about your background, that's fun to hear about. So let's get into eBird.
• 14:41
  Tyce Erickson: Orin, you want to give us an overview of kind of what that is and how people can participate in that and learn more about the birds around us and specifically maybe upland, waterfowl, whatever.
• 14:55
  Orin Robinson: eBird is an app. You can download the eBird app on your phone.
• 14:58
  Orin Robinson: There's also an interface on online, if you prefer to use online. But it really, it is an app where you can submit bird sightings.
• 15:09
  Orin Robinson: So if you go out and see birds, you can keep track of the birds on the app.
• 15:14
  Orin Robinson: The app knows where you are, if you want it to know where you are.
• 15:17
  Orin Robinson: It knows what time you're out there and things like that and you tell it I saw three cardinals over there and I saw eight robins and then we got to a pond and I saw you know six wizards and it you know when you do that and you have the effort information about how long you were out there how far you traveled while you were you know submitting your birds and things like that that data you know you get to keep that data, that data is Up there for you to be able to see, you get a map and you get to see, you know, I've seen birds here and there and it keeps tracking your stats and where you see birds and all kinds of things like that.
• 15:52
  Orin Robinson: But also that data comes to us and I use that data to create, you know, bird distributions and look at where...
• 16:05
  Orin Robinson: Birds are for, you know, single species or multi-species type of studies.
• 16:10
  Orin Robinson: Right now, we're using this data in a lot of waterfowl research.
• 16:16
  Orin Robinson: I'm working with the Sea Duck Joint Venture on looking at how we can better survey sea duck populations because in the current...
• 16:26
  Orin Robinson: Waterfowl breeding population habitat survey. They don't pick up a lot of sea ducks.
• 16:30
  Orin Robinson: That survey was designed for, you know, mallards and pintails and those kinds of birds.
• 16:36
  Orin Robinson: I'm working with the survey redesign team.
• 16:40
  Orin Robinson: That waterfowl breeding population habitat survey is undergoing a...
• 16:45
  Orin Robinson: evaluation for being redesigned.
• 16:49
  Orin Robinson: And we're using a lot of the data and analyses out of this eBird data to help inform that.
• 16:57
  Orin Robinson: So when you open that eBird app and you are putting in your sightings and things like that, you genuinely are contributing to on the ground wildlife management.
• 17:11
  Orin Robinson: And it's not just waterfowl that we do this for, it's all kinds of birds, so even the warblers that come through, folks who are studying habitat relationships, trying to figure out why a certain warbler population might be declining or moving or things like that, so it's all species.
• 17:29
  Orin Robinson: You can also look at the eBird.org website, there's a science tab.
• 17:36
  Orin Robinson: And I work on the team that creates what's called Status and Trends, and you can look, I think we have almost 4,000 species mapped.
• 17:46
  Orin Robinson: Where you can watch based on these eBird reports and then the type of mathematical models where we put together where these birds are at every week of the year.
• 17:56
  Orin Robinson: So I think I sent you guys the blue-winged teal visualization where you can literally watch blue-winged teal migrate throughout the year and come back down based on that kind of data.
• 18:07
  Orin Robinson: And this is the stuff that's being used in wildlife management and things like that.
• 18:12
  Orin Robinson: So it's a really cool app just for a birder to use, right, because it keeps track of all the things for you, but also it's an incredible tool for us as researchers to help figure out what's going on in these wildlife populations.
• 18:29
  Tyce Erickson: That's awesome.
• 18:30
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, I was kind of playing with it a little bit before we did this podcast.
• 18:34
  Tyce Erickson: And yeah, it's cool how it looks like. Yeah, when I was playing the app, it was cool.
• 18:38
  Tyce Erickson: It looks like you can log your information on the birds you're seeing, like you mentioned.
• 18:43
  Tyce Erickson: And I could see how that could kind of, me kind of being, well, being a hunter and kind of a bird watcher guy, it'd be fun just to kind of keep track and see how many species you can get kind of.
• 18:54
  Tyce Erickson: You know, logged into the app or whatever and at the same time it helps you guys out.
• 18:59
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, I can't tell you how many, you know, eBird checklists I've made sitting in a tree stand deer hunting or sitting on the ground turkey hunting or, you know, it's, you know, you're seeing that stuff while you're out there.
• 19:12
  Orin Robinson: You know, it's fun to log that and, you know, yeah, it's, I use that and Merlin as well, while I'm out in the woods hunting all the time.
• 19:22
  Tyce Erickson: Oh, so on there, tell us kind of how it works, so you obviously can download the app, you take a picture of it and it kind of, as I was looking at it, then you can locate it on a map and you just put the data in essentially where you saw it, where it was, what the specie was, and if you can get a picture of it.
• 19:37
  Tyce Erickson: Is there also a place you can upload audio on there or on the eBird app?
• 19:44
  Orin Robinson: To the eBird app, I believe you can transfer audio from Merlin.
• 19:51
  Orin Robinson: Like, if you're listening to birds with Merlin, with your Merlin app, I believe you can add that to an eBird checklist now.
• 19:57
  Orin Robinson: So you can say, you know, I had a warbler over here singing and then you can upload that audio file.
• 20:06
  Tyce Erickson: If people don't know a bird, is there an option on there? They can take a picture in it.
• 20:11
  Tyce Erickson: I mean, I think your iPhones do that probably two to a certain point, but is there something on those apps you can take a picture of it?
• 20:16
  Tyce Erickson: I imagine it'll tell you what the bird is.
• 20:20
  Mitch Barry: Merlin does that. That's where Merlin really comes in is you can take a photo.
• 20:24
  Mitch Barry: And those models have gotten really good.
• 20:27
  Mitch Barry: And if you upload that photo and kind of go through a multi-step process, you know, kind of like the date and location of which, you know, where you were, that kind of helps our models range it down to a certain set of species.
• 20:38
  Mitch Barry: And then it will identify it and give you kind of like your top pick or top recommendation based on that photo.
• 20:45
  Mitch Barry: And then there will give you some other options in case it's slightly off, but nowadays, I mean...
• 20:50
  Mitch Barry: It's really accurate. I would highly recommend using it.
• 20:54
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, and Merlin, a lot of people, most people know Merlin for the sound ID, right?
• 20:59
  Orin Robinson: But it actually did start as a photo ID app.
• 21:03
  Tyce Erickson: Okay, okay, cool. Mitch, let's, that's a good transition into the Merlin app.
• 21:07
  Tyce Erickson: Tell us what that, kind of what that is, the audience, maybe the difference between eBird and Merlin or the benefit of why to have both, and maybe kind of go into that.
• 21:19
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, so I think, you know, Merlin, you know, I kind of come from this background of, you know, using eBird for a long time, and Merlin is kind of this, if you're not a, you know, necessarily a hardcore birder, Merlin allows you to interact with the birds around you in a way that, you know, instead of having like the field guide back at home, it's kind of like your personal field guide and...
• 21:39
  Mitch Barry: You know, active birder in your pocket that can tell you what's singing around you.
• 21:44
  Mitch Barry: If you do get a photo and upload it through photo ID in live time, it'll tell you what it is.
• 21:49
  Mitch Barry: So this kind of, it's targeting this more emerging birding community.
• 21:53
  Mitch Barry: And since COVID, I think a lot of people that are outside, they're starting to, you know, appreciate the birds around a little bit more.
• 22:00
  Mitch Barry: And Merlin is this tool that allows them to kind of understand those birds in a better sense than they might.
• 22:06
  Mitch Barry: Bail to without that tool.
• 22:08
  Mitch Barry: And so far, it's been really widely accepted and people are really loving it.
• 22:13
  Mitch Barry: And that's across the board, you know, that doesn't have to be, you know, that's people in their local city parks, but that's also a lot of hunters.
• 22:20
  Mitch Barry: And when, you know, we've been chatting with hunters for a long time, and I'm a turkey hunter a little bit in the spring as well, and I think it's, you know, Birders are, you know, hunters are using Merlin throughout the year, but there's something about that turkey woods in the spring when all the, you know, new tropical migrants are showing back up from South America and Central America and, you know, they're singing all around you and you've got that dawn chorus and, you know, while you're sitting there listening for a gobble or waiting for the tree to, or a turkey to pitch down, you know, you can kind of have your phone going and it keeps you entertained and you're learning more about the woods around you.
• 22:51
  Mitch Barry: So it's really cool to see the hunting community kind of adopt Merlin and you know you've heard it, you know, you've heard Merlin get mentioned in other places in recent years and but yeah, I would say it's really targeting that like beginner bird or how do you, how do you approach going out and looking for birds?
• 23:06
  Mitch Barry: How do you identify them? And that's probably, you know, the photo ID feature was the initial kind of segue into this but then once we launch Sound ID where you can press record and it will listen to the bird vocalizing and identifying it for you in live time actually highlighting that particular species you know on your phone as it's singing so you can be like okay well that's one bird that's the next bird over you know you can get you know as many different species that are vocalizing at one time will populate in Merlin.
• 23:37
  Mitch Barry: So it kind of gives you this really cool way to interact in lifetime and kind of verify, you know, what you're listening to.
• 23:43
  Mitch Barry: So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's kind of the broader,
• 23:45
  Tyce Erickson: yeah,
• 23:47
  Mitch Barry: the Merlin audience.
• 23:49
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, and I can tell you one thing, so I know my birds pretty well up here, not as well as a lot of folks in the building here with us, but I'm pretty good with with my birds here in the northeast. And I use Merlin all the time. So I'm not much of a beginner.
• 24:04
  Orin Robinson: I'm not the beginner that Mitch is talking about.
• 24:07
  Orin Robinson: But what Merlin will do for me will clue me into something that I might have missed.
• 24:13
  Orin Robinson: It does that for me all the time. I'll look down and go, I didn't hear that.
• 24:16
  Orin Robinson: What are you talking about Merlin? And then it'll clue me in to start listening for that.
• 24:21
  Orin Robinson: And almost every time I'll end up finding it. You know, so that's another really cool use.
• 24:27
  Orin Robinson: Another use that I've just now started seeing people talk about.
• 24:31
  Orin Robinson: I saw this thing the other day where someone was talking about, you know, just general woodsmanship and deer hunting and understanding some like crows alarm calls or the different calls Blue Jays make can alert you to something coming your way in the woods. And Merlin, have Merlin open to tell you, this is a blue jay.
• 24:53
  Orin Robinson: That call came out of a blue jay.
• 24:54
  Orin Robinson: If that call came out of Crow or that kind of thing, it can help you just with general woodsmanship as well.
• 25:00
  Tyce Erickson: That's cool. Yeah, yeah, I, you know, Mitch, when you talked about the springtime and turkey hunting.
• 25:07
  Tyce Erickson: Any of us that are turkey hunters that you've been out there, you can totally relate to what you just said, because as that sun's coming, the woods are just alive and I feel like you don't, I don't know, I don't know if it's the woods just seem more like calm and quiet and then the birds just, it's like you say it's an orchestra out there in the spring and so I don't seem to, I don't seem to notice it as much in the fall, you know, but probably like you say it's the migration happening or whatever it is, but mostly it's
• 25:34
  Mitch Barry: a spring thing.
• 25:36
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, it's mostly a spring thing in the way that a lot of the, you know, males that are migrating north are singing, you know, whether that be to like stake out a territory of that's their like final destination or just as a general like you know dawn chorus like some birds are singing i'm singing too so that's where there's kind of this like if you really get into it there's this like almost like competition in the bird world that every morning you know it sounds like a dawn chorus but it's really everyone saying i'm over here you're over there you stay there this is my territory and then when you do that across the board with 20 or 30 different species you know it can almost be deafening when you're sitting in that turkey woods and it's really Really enjoyable.
• 26:14
  Mitch Barry: You know, it kind of helps the time go by if you're sitting at the base of a tree hoping for a turkey to come in, but
• 26:18
  Tyce Erickson: yeah.
• 26:19
  Mitch Barry: Yeah,
• 26:19
  Tyce Erickson: I love that.
• 26:21
  Tyce Erickson: So, as I was reading a little bit on, I think it was eBird, I believe, it sounds like, is it an overall trend we're losing birds in the world? Or no?
• 26:32
  Tyce Erickson: I'm sure there's certain species that are growing and increasing, but...
• 26:36
  Mitch Barry: Right.
• 26:37
  Orin Robinson: In general, there's a decline, you know, there's a...
• 26:41
  Orin Robinson: Big paper that came out a few years ago that talked about the loss of around 3 billion birds that we would still have for certain things not happening.
• 26:53
  Orin Robinson: You know, but yeah, the general trends are declining, although trends are not spatially uniform, right? You could have a declining species, but you know, one little pocket is increasing or doing fine.
• 27:08
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, sure.
• 27:09
  Orin Robinson: And those are things we use eBird to help study, where it declines the greatest, where are they improving, things like that.
• 27:18
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, I know that was kind of a shotgun statement, you know, but I guess what I'm thinking, I think back when I was young, I used to see a lot of cedar waxwings through Utah.
• 27:27
  Tyce Erickson: I mean, not a lot, but a decent amount, and I can't remember the last time.
• 27:32
  Tyce Erickson: I've seen a cedar waxwing and maybe, you know, I did live up in Orem growing up, which is, you know, it's 30 minutes away from my house on the edge of some river bottoms.
• 27:42
  Tyce Erickson: And so maybe they... Come down through there. They were hitting it.
• 27:45
  Tyce Erickson: It seemed like there was a certain berry that they would eat.
• 27:48
  Tyce Erickson: You'd see them sometimes around on people's houses and eating those cedar waxwings.
• 27:52
  Tyce Erickson: And maybe I don't have that berry here at my house. I'm sure it, I mean, like anything, a migration, it seems like you can move 30 minutes one way and all the birds are there and 30 minutes that way.
• 28:02
  Tyce Erickson: So, but I just seem like there's some certain species that I don't see as As much as I used to when I was younger, you know, seeing, I saw a handful of cardinals in Utah, and I haven't seen a cardinal for 20 years, you know, so, so I can imagine how this would be fun if you really get engaged in that community.
• 28:21
  Tyce Erickson: And someone's like, Hey, I saw some cardinals over here.
• 28:23
  Tyce Erickson: I saw some cedar waxwings, and it's like, Oh, those are my old stomping ground.
• 28:27
  Tyce Erickson: So I could see how that could be exciting.
• 28:32
  Mitch Barry: Absolutely.
• 28:33
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah.
• 28:34
  Tyce Erickson: Tell us about waterfowl and how maybe some of the different waterfowl species and what you guys are seeing there.
• 28:43
  Tyce Erickson: If you don't mind some of the most common ones like the pintail and wigeon and maybe some of those species if you guys don't mind touching on those.
• 28:51
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, so the survey of the waterfowl breeding population habitat survey numbers just recently came out, right?
• 29:01
  Orin Robinson: I'm trying to actually find them right now, but
• 29:05
  Tyce Erickson: any- Are the prairie potholes, are they doing good this year?
• 29:08
  Tyce Erickson: Are they still a drought up there or what, do you know, you guys know much about that?
• 29:12
  Orin Robinson: It has been dry for a while and that's where a lot of our declines are from, right?
• 29:19
  Orin Robinson: I mean, that is, you know, you hear it called the duck factory all the time. You know, that landscape is not doing well then ducks in general. You're going to see a decline.
• 29:30
  Orin Robinson: One thing, you know, you mentioned pintails.
• 29:32
  Orin Robinson: One interesting thing with pintails, and I was just last month discussing this with some of the pintail researchers in Canada.
• 29:41
  Orin Robinson: They, what looks like a big decline in the prairie potholes may just be movement.
• 29:51
  Orin Robinson: To the north, they may be breeding up further north and some of the research I'm doing right now, combining eBird data with telemetry data and some other aerial survey data, it is also pointing to that, that pintails aren't necessarily going away, they're just going somewhere where we're not count it.
• 30:15
  Orin Robinson: So that's not to say that they're doing fine.
• 30:19
  Orin Robinson: They're still in a decline now that we kind of know this and know where to look.
• 30:24
  Orin Robinson: But it may not be as drastic as we had initially thought it was.
• 30:28
  Orin Robinson: And that's another reason why we're discussing redesigning this waterfowl breeding habitat, breeding population and habitat survey.
• 30:38
  Orin Robinson: It's because, you know, almost certainly distributions have shifted since the survey was initially designed.
• 30:45
  Orin Robinson: And we need to try to get better and more efficient at counting them.
• 30:50
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, interesting. So, I mean, I think it's pretty, it seems common knowledge, at least, but I see our landscape is changing.
• 30:59
  Tyce Erickson: I feel like the migration is changing to certain levels. This is just my...
• 31:04
  Tyce Erickson: From a non-scientific point of view, I feel like a lot of birds maybe don't need to migrate as much south.
• 31:13
  Tyce Erickson: It seems like there's always going to be a migration.
• 31:14
  Tyce Erickson: I'm not sure if the science is there to...
• 31:17
  Tyce Erickson: to affirm what I'm saying but I mean our winter was so warm here in Utah last year we were in December I think it was like 80 degrees and we just have not not had the last couple winters really good hard freezes where we see the big influx of Canadian geese and some of the you know big bushes south and I don't know if those birds my guess is they're stopping Just further north, where the frost line is, and if they're like, hey, we don't, there's food, there's water here, why do we need to keep heading south?
• 31:46
  Tyce Erickson: Is there some, is there some truth to what I'm saying, or am I up in the dark?
• 31:52
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, and I'll, you know, I'll be cautious how I touch on this, because I know it can be a touchy subject in the waterfowl community.
• 31:57
  Mitch Barry: But there is certain ducks migrate for different reasons.
• 32:01
  Mitch Barry: And, you know, I'll go to the baseline of like, everyone's kind of Enjoying their September teal seasons right now, and they're harvesting blue-wing and green-wing and most of them move based on a length of day calendar thing and more than like a weather event.
• 32:15
  Mitch Barry: So those blue-winged teal are going to come south every year in September and they're going to go down to Central America and they're going to go down to Florida and the Caribbean and they're going to continue to do that.
• 32:23
  Mitch Barry: Now, if that habitat changes, that might shift, but that's a pretty consistent trend.
• 32:27
  Mitch Barry: Whereas you've got, you know, mallards, black ducks.
• 32:30
  Mitch Barry: Pintail are a little bit of an in-between bird.
• 32:32
  Mitch Barry: I think they're a bit of a fair-weather bird. They're going to go down to the Gulf Coast for the most part.
• 32:38
  Mitch Barry: But you know, you've got these mallards and stuff that often they're getting pushed with the freeze line.
• 32:44
  Mitch Barry: So if that line is a couple hundred miles farther north one year versus the next, They're going to sit up north, they're going to stay on the big rivers, and they're going to go feed in the ag fields that don't have snow and ice on them yet.
• 32:54
  Mitch Barry: So it's a balance.
• 32:55
  Mitch Barry: And I think, you know, I heard a lot about that, you know, more out where you're from last year as you kind of had that warm winter.
• 33:01
  Mitch Barry: And people weren't even seeing mallards really in Montana until, you know, the season was just about to end because they were still up in Alberta and in Saskatchewan.
• 33:09
  Mitch Barry: So I think you've got this balance of like. You get this cold weather, the birds that tend to get pushed with that weather come south, but if it stays warm, they're kind of lazy and they don't want to move if they don't have to. And you know, I think that's what a lot of hunters are experiencing with mallards in particular.
• 33:25
  Mitch Barry: Another thing with mallards, if you're familiar with the Duck DNA Project,
• 33:32
  Tyce Erickson: I'm not familiar with that. What is that? I think you can turn them in or something, right?
• 33:39
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, so they send you vials and you're supposed to send them back a genetic sample of your birds.
• 33:47
  Mitch Barry: What they're seeing is a lot of mallards that are hybridizing with game farm released birds.
• 33:57
  Tyce Erickson: Interesting.
• 33:58
  Orin Robinson: And a lot of studies that have been done on this, and we've actually, you know, discussed using some eBird data with them, it was a really cool thing that we've been able to pick up out of eBird, is that, you know, mallards in eBird don't behave like other ducks, and, you know, you combine that with what they're learning with the Duck DNA, that they're hybridizing more and more.
• 34:22
  Orin Robinson: with game farm birds and then the behavioral studies on the known game farm mallard hybrids show that those birds with game farm ancestry, they don't migrate as far if they migrate at all.
• 34:38
  Tyce Erickson: Makes sense. They don't
• 34:39
  Orin Robinson: move, they don't have daily movements that are as far as a pure wild mallard.
• 34:44
  Orin Robinson: And they are more strongly associated with urban areas, so you're going to see more parks, golf courses, things like that.
• 34:52
  Orin Robinson: So what we see in eBird is if you split, you know, say the Mississippi Flyway in the, you know, North and South, there's a lot of birds that stay up in that northern part of the Mississippi Flyway around the Great Lakes area, in most of those These birds are of game farm ancestry or have some game farm ancestry in them.
• 35:15
  Orin Robinson: The birds that get to the south are the ones that are more wild.
• 35:21
  Orin Robinson: They're the ones that have it in them who migrate, right?
• 35:25
  Orin Robinson: So with mallards in particular, it's not that they're fair-weather birds.
• 35:29
  Orin Robinson: It's that their genetics are being changed by this by this This is an intergression with...
• 35:36
  Orin Robinson: With these game farm mallards.
• 35:38
  Mitch Barry: And that's continuing to leach farther and farther west into some of those, you know, prairie pothole nesting mallards.
• 35:45
  Orin Robinson: Like traditionally this kind of was thought to be a Great Lakes issue and now they're starting to, with Duck DNA, pick up that genetic trait, inching west.
• 35:53
  Mitch Barry: So I don't think it's a big enough issue, like, to affect those, you know, Montana, you know, birds, but it's heading that way.
• 36:00
  Mitch Barry: So it's kind of an interesting new scientific thing we can do with with the genetic work.
• 36:04
  Tyce Erickson: Any idea where the farm raised mallard came from? Then they all come from mallards.
• 36:09
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, so historically, a lot of places on the East Coast would kind of boost their local duck population around a lot of duck clubs with releasing, you know, pen raised mallards.
• 36:23
  Orin Robinson: And that came from the game fired mallard is a duck brought in from Europe.
• 36:29
  Mitch Barry: So it's a duck that's really for a long time, you know.
• 36:31
  Mitch Barry: You've probably seen the clips, you know, they do a lot of duck shoots in Europe where they, you know, have those duck ponds and they do duck drives and stuff.
• 36:38
  Mitch Barry: And like, so that mallard was brought over to boost the duck populations around a lot of these gun clubs as a lot of the actual wild birds were decreasing in the region due to market gunning and stuff like that in the turn of the century. So that kind of gave you this influx of non-migratory mallards brought to the east coast.
• 36:57
  Mitch Barry: And then that kind of spread up into the Great Lakes region around some of those wild mallards and the rest is history.
• 37:04
  Mitch Barry: So that's kind of where that all started as in the last, you know, 100-120 years probably.
• 37:09
  Tyce Erickson: Amazing.
• 37:10
  Mitch Barry: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Tyce Erickson: That's crazy.
• 37:12
  Tyce Erickson: So then in Europe, they obviously not being as big, they maybe they just didn't migrate there too.
• 37:17
  Tyce Erickson: So that genetic strain that just, they kind of just hung out.
• 37:20
  Tyce Erickson: And so we're maybe seeing that now today.
• 37:23
  Mitch Barry: I think so.
• 37:23
  Mitch Barry: And it hasn't, you know, leached into black ducks yet to the level that you would be concerned about.
• 37:28
  Mitch Barry: I mean, black ducks are still, you know, growing up on the East Coast and hunting the Great Lakes.
• 37:32
  Mitch Barry: I mean, that's probably my top puddle duck.
• 37:34
  Mitch Barry: And I'm happy to see them still acting the way they did a hundred years ago.
• 37:37
  Mitch Barry: You know, that's pretty nice to go to some skinny water late season and have a couple of pairs of black ducks drop in.
• 37:43
  Mitch Barry: It's always an enjoyable experience. But
• 37:45
  Tyce Erickson: that's cool. I've never hunted black ducks I don't know if they come through Utah at all.
• 37:50
  Tyce Erickson: They might be if, I don't know, if do any come out over this way or be ever, I mean, there's probably some,
• 37:55
  Orin Robinson: there's, there may be the stray one or two, but it's fun to see you're probably more likely to pick up a stray Mexican duck coming up out of Arizona than you are a black duck from the east coast.
• 38:08
  Tyce Erickson: I think my brother, we shot a Mexican duck when we were young because I thought it was a, I thought it was a black duck.
• 38:14
  Tyce Erickson: I'm like, this looks like a black duck and I wish I still had a picture of it, but I'm pretty sure looking back, I think it was a Mexican duck that we that we had shot then, yeah. So, tell me, I have a question. This is kind of, this is interesting.
• 38:31
  Tyce Erickson: The Eurasian collared dove, that is a bird that in just the last, I don't know, what is it, 15-20 years, it seems like they did not exist and now They're kind of everywhere. I mean, they're here in Utah in high numbers.
• 38:46
  Tyce Erickson: There's no season. There's no limit on them. They're actually great.
• 38:50
  Tyce Erickson: I enjoy them because they are fun to shoot and work your dogs over.
• 38:54
  Tyce Erickson: And what's your guys's... Do you know where they came from?
• 38:57
  Tyce Erickson: I heard they came from the Bahamas or something like that, and they've just kind of spread.
• 39:01
  Tyce Erickson: What's the research on those?
• 39:03
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, I don't know their specific origin.
• 39:07
  Tyce Erickson: I was just curious if you knew. Yeah, sorry. I know you don't. Yeah,
• 39:10
  Orin Robinson: so I grew up in Alabama, but we would go to Arkansas every year and dove hunt and duck hunt and I remember it was like, there was one year where there were no collared doves and the next year that's all we shot it seemed like.
• 39:29
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:30
  Orin Robinson: And, you know, we still kill a few there. Every year, I wasn't able to hunt this year, but the last time I was there a couple of years ago, we still kill plenty of collared doves.
• 39:40
  Orin Robinson: Not nearly as many.
• 39:42
  Orin Robinson: They are declining in that part of their range, but I think they are expanding.
• 39:48
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, you know, I think you're right on the...
• 39:51
  Mitch Barry: I've kind of heard the Bahamian origin story for them too. As you've kind of seen over, their spread is really interesting.
• 39:58
  Mitch Barry: They seem to want to move to the northwest because like you can, there's guys out in Washington state and Oregon that are shooting collared doves at, you know, cattle farms and stuff like that.
• 40:06
  Mitch Barry: So like coming from New York, I actually...
• 40:09
  Mitch Barry: You know, on a birding side of things, I saw my first collared dove in my hometown, you know, three weeks ago. So like a really rare bird in New York.
• 40:17
  Mitch Barry: So they seem, it's pretty interesting. They kind of swept through the south.
• 40:21
  Mitch Barry: Dove hunters have been taking advantage of them and then they kind of moved up into the, you know, the Great Basin and up into the Pacific Northwest.
• 40:27
  Mitch Barry: It's pretty interesting because they didn't go everywhere.
• 40:29
  Mitch Barry: Like, I would love them in New York because we don't get a mourning dove season.
• 40:33
  Mitch Barry: So if they gave us some collared doves, that would give us an opportunity to hunt something, but they haven't shown up yet.
• 40:37
  Mitch Barry: So, figures across at some point. But
• 40:39
  Tyce Erickson: yeah, I think that's, yeah, I wonder if they will.
• 40:42
  Tyce Erickson: That is interesting on, I wonder if there's any in-depth study on that bird because they definitely moved in. I've seen them up through Idaho. I don't know if I've seen them.
• 40:51
  Tyce Erickson: You know, I mean, that's primarily on Utah and Idaho a lot, so I see them up through there, but they definitely are harder, hardier.
• 40:58
  Tyce Erickson: They'll stay around in the winter more where the mourning doves, you know, head out and they don't seem, you'll kill them in the same fields, like a wheat field or cornfield, but from what I gather, they don't seem to bother the mourning dove.
• 41:14
  Tyce Erickson: Too much for when I'm just observing myself, you know, they kind of nest in the around towns a lot in the pine trees and around houses a little more and then they'll go to feed lots and eat corn and all that stuff more where the doves seem to, the mourning doves seem to be a little separate from them.
• 41:30
  Tyce Erickson: Do you guys have any opinions on that or thoughts?
• 41:35
  Mitch Barry: I think, you know, when you mentioned the fact that they're a little hardier, they do stick around year-round, I think that's that kind of, you know, some introduced species, they'll, they'll work up the, you know, the migration, and they'll figure it out.
• 41:46
  Mitch Barry: But I think a lot of introduced species don't migrate.
• 41:48
  Mitch Barry: So that's probably where the fact that they are, you know, an invasive species in some way, they don't migrate.
• 41:54
  Mitch Barry: But yeah, I don't know if it's just their...
• 41:57
  Mitch Barry: Maybe from where they came from, they're a little bit more used to being around civilization and that tends to be more the trend they have.
• 42:03
  Mitch Barry: I don't know. I haven't read up on any studies.
• 42:06
  Mitch Barry: I'm sure they've done them if they're interfering with Morning Dove and like White Wing Dove populations in parts of the country that have them, but I don't have any further info on that.
• 42:14
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, they've been fun.
• 42:18
  Tyce Erickson: It's been just interesting to see in my lifetime them coming into the state and then also, you know, Utah, the wild turkey.
• 42:25
  Tyce Erickson: When I was young, I don't remember ever seeing wild turkeys and now our wild turkey, we have a pretty dang good wild turkey population, you know, and have a general season.
• 42:33
  Tyce Erickson: And so it's been fun to see the changes in that.
• 42:38
  Tyce Erickson: And so I think coming back to eBird and Merlin, I think, I'm excited to...
• 42:44
  Tyce Erickson: I didn't know about them.
• 42:45
  Tyce Erickson: So I think I've heard of Merlin, maybe some people using it, but I'm excited to kind of play with them myself and kind of learn more about the species.
• 42:52
  Tyce Erickson: There's something I love to do. And I have five kids ranging from 17 down to five.
• 42:57
  Tyce Erickson: And so I was using the Merlin app with them and testing my kids.
• 43:00
  Tyce Erickson: Hey, because we live out on a farm. We're on seven and a half acres here in Utah.
• 43:04
  Tyce Erickson: And so, you know, there are a lot of birds around us.
• 43:07
  Tyce Erickson: I was testing my son as I was driving over here. What's this, Mike?
• 43:10
  Tyce Erickson: I'll give you 10 bucks being mentioned. This one is the Northern Flicker, you know, and he's like, Oh no, I've heard that one, but I couldn't remember, you know, and so, and it's fun cause they all, they make different sounds, you know, he had the Starling those congregate heavily out here.
• 43:24
  Tyce Erickson: I'm sure probably everywhere, but in the winter, you know, they'll have their group chatter.
• 43:29
  Tyce Erickson: And when I started playing that one, when they're all in a big flock, you know, he's like, Oh, I totally recognize that one because they'll migrate through and you hear that, you know, so I think it's such a great way for hunters and non hunters just to be involved, be more connected to what's around us, you know, the migration is so special when you get out there in the marsh and you see that migration happening, it's just like, this has been happening for Hundreds of thousands of years, you know, and it just happens even though, even if we're just going to work in a mortar building, just the world is happening around us.
• 44:03
  Tyce Erickson: And it's just cool to be, and we are part of the world, we're part of this environment.
• 44:06
  Tyce Erickson: So it is fun to plug in a little more and learn more about your surroundings, you know.
• 44:12
  Tyce Erickson: So I thought that kind of came to me when I was in college my professor he said if You know, he's like, I guarantee you're not gonna get into drugs and all these different things if you just learn more kind of about your surroundings.
• 44:25
  Tyce Erickson: If you feel your brain with a lot of categories, you learn about nature and you learn about...
• 44:30
  Tyce Erickson: you know birds and weather and animals and all these different things you just create you know your mind doesn't get bored because life around you is an exciting place you know so he's just like that's a way you know as a psychology professor if you can do that you're gonna not get too bored with life you know so
• 44:49
  Mitch Barry: absolutely and
• 44:51
  Tyce Erickson: now before we wrap any other Things that I didn't mention about eBird or Merlin or that you guys want to talk about that I'm missing.
• 45:03
  Orin Robinson: Nothing, nothing I can think of. I think we hit it pretty good. Yeah, it's
• 45:07
  Tyce Erickson: like we were, we covered everything. Anyways, folks, tell us, Orin and Mitch, where everyone can find, are you guys on social media too?
• 45:16
  Tyce Erickson: Just tell us where people can find all the information about Merlin and eBird and all that.
• 45:22
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, so on a Merlin side of things, we do have, you know, Merlin has an Instagram account and posts some stuff on there.
• 45:29
  Mitch Barry: You know, you can find my email through the Cornell website, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• 45:34
  Mitch Barry: I have an Instagram account that I use a little bit for, it's on my outdoor recreation side of things.
• 45:38
  Mitch Barry: And then I have another one, which I used to do more of a business, but I used to have kind of in college did waterfowl taxidermy for a while. Now I do a bunch of my own birds.
• 45:47
  Mitch Barry: It's kind of a cool thing we never really got into. But
• 45:49
  Tyce Erickson: if you want to put a plug into that, your personal stuff, it's up to you.
• 45:53
  Orin Robinson: Honestly, I don't even have the capacity to take in the business, but it's like a super fun little...
• 45:57
  Orin Robinson: Mitch does awesome work, man. I've got a few birds on my wall that he did.
• 46:01
  Orin Robinson: I think he's got a frozen one.
• 46:04
  Tyce Erickson: I'll be sending some to you this fall, man.
• 46:08
  Orin Robinson: Yeah, you know,
• 46:10
  Mitch Barry: you can find me on Instagram under Mitch Barry and I don't know, Orin's got.
• 46:14
  Mitch Barry: Yeah, I think the Lab of Ornithology has an Instagram, gosh, I don't even know what it is.
• 46:21
  Tyce Erickson: That's okay.
• 46:21
  Mitch Barry: I am social media inept.
• 46:23
  Orin Robinson: That might be a good thing though.
• 46:26
  Tyce Erickson: More peace in your life, I'm sure.
• 46:29
  Orin Robinson: You can go to eBird.org or science.eBird.org if you want to see those maps of all the different species.
• 46:37
  Mitch Barry: And then, yeah, you can check that stuff out there. It's all free to look at and use.
• 46:41
  Orin Robinson: That's another thing with Merlin and eBird. You are absolutely, you know, if you want to donate, you can, but you'll never be asked to pay for anything on them.
• 46:51
  Orin Robinson: Yep, entirely free.
• 46:52
  Orin Robinson: And yeah, if you have any more questions, you can always visit the yomerlinbirds.org, give you a little bit more background on the app itself and some of the tools that we provide to people.
• 47:02
  Mitch Barry: So really cool.
• 47:05
  Tyce Erickson: A couple quick questions that kind of came to my mind for wrap up.
• 47:09
  Tyce Erickson: When I was looking at the maps and it shows the coloration of where the bird, are those data points where people saw a bird and that's what that dot represents or how is that on there?
• 47:21
  Orin Robinson: So if you're looking at the Status and Trends maps, like the blue-winged teal map that I sent, you can see them moving around.
• 47:30
  Orin Robinson: That is a modeled product. That is a product that uses eBird observations, all the information that eBird collects, like when you're there, how long you are out there, that kind of thing.
• 47:42
  Orin Robinson: It also uses a bunch of NASA satellite products, so we know the environment that you were in when you were seeing those birds.
• 47:51
  Orin Robinson: And we run through these huge machine learning models that will...
• 47:56
  Orin Robinson: Let us predict, you know, these birds based on these years of observations we have and this suite of over 150 environmental variables.
• 48:06
  Orin Robinson: This is where these birds are at this time of year and each jump during that migration is a week.
• 48:13
  Orin Robinson: So we know at that, you know, three by three kilometer resolution and weekly temporal resolution.
• 48:21
  Orin Robinson: Where those birds are going to be. So that's not just the observations.
• 48:24
  Orin Robinson: The observations are data that go into that.
• 48:28
  Tyce Erickson: Okay. I see.
• 48:32
  Orin Robinson: If you just look at eBird itself, that you can get on the maps there and look at hot spots and see where people are seeing birds right now in almost real time.
• 48:44
  Orin Robinson: But that is strictly the observation. So that's the difference there.
• 48:50
  Orin Robinson: If you're just on eBird.org, looking around, you're getting people's observations.
• 48:55
  Orin Robinson: If you're looking at the products on science.eBird.org, the Status and Trends, the moving map or the trend maps, that is the model of the product.
• 49:06
  Tyce Erickson: Do they use any type of radar to track birds?
• 49:10
  Tyce Erickson: I thought I've seen stuff like on snow geese or something like that.
• 49:13
  Tyce Erickson: I mean, can they see, you know?
• 49:15
  Orin Robinson: Yes. There's a group here they call Aeroecology, you know, and as part of that Aeroecology group is using radar data.
• 49:25
  Orin Robinson: So when, you know, we use radar data mostly for weather, right?
• 49:31
  Orin Robinson: so in this weather radar.
• 49:33
  Orin Robinson: They have to filter out a bunch of stuff whether it be bugs or birds or bats or things like that to give us the weather, the actual weather radar. So these guys do the exact opposite.
• 49:47
  Orin Robinson: They take the stuff that the weather guys filter out and it's usually birds.
• 49:53
  Orin Robinson: You can tell by the altitude and some other things that it's birds and not bugs or something like that and they'll use that to see.
• 50:01
  Orin Robinson: you know mass movements you can look at there's a website called BirdCast where they use that information to try to predict you know the the migration for a given day so that might be another thing hunters won't clue into is that migration going to look like tomorrow is it worth getting out of bed
• 50:24
  Tyce Erickson: yeah you know interesting That's cool.
• 50:30
  Tyce Erickson: And then all these things are, oh go ahead, sorry.
• 50:35
  Orin Robinson: No, I was just, I was just saying, yeah, there absolutely is a big group using this radar.
• 50:40
  Tyce Erickson: Tell me about it. And then this is also worldwide, right?
• 50:44
  Tyce Erickson: It's not just the North America, North South America, that Merlin, it's tracking everything. That's awesome. Yes.
• 50:54
  Orin Robinson: Merlin, gosh, Merlin's available.
• 50:56
  Orin Robinson: I don't even know how many languages Merlin's available in now.
• 50:59
  Orin Robinson: One thing, if you do travel, there are different packs.
• 51:02
  Orin Robinson: Like, I found myself in Europe a couple years ago, and I was like, no, I know Merlin's wrong.
• 51:09
  Orin Robinson: It was trying to ID North American birds based on what I was seeing in Europe, because I didn't have a UK.
• 51:15
  Orin Robinson: Do use Merlin and you travel and it's awesome when you travel because I don't know birds outside of the United States very well.
• 51:23
  Orin Robinson: Make sure you download the correct pack for it so you're not going to need it.
• 51:27
  Orin Robinson: If two days like I was going, no, I know that's not what this is. But yeah, we have a,
• 51:32
  Tyce Erickson: how do you do that?
• 51:35
  Mitch Barry: It's right there in the app.
• 51:39
  Mitch Barry: No, you often, it often will suggest the best pack for you as well, depending on where you are at.
• 51:45
  Mitch Barry: So that's a super kind of helpful feature.
• 51:47
  Mitch Barry: And, you know, it's just kind of a, it's a pretty unique thing because it takes a lot of work to train these models.
• 51:52
  Mitch Barry: You know, it's a, it's one of these things where in a world of AI, you know, this came before that.
• 51:59
  Mitch Barry: So this is a, you know, it's a It's a pretty cool system to wear.
• 52:03
  Mitch Barry: You're taking these recordings that, you know, every day, you know, people are submitting to this library and we're training them up and then you have to, you know, motivate people to go out in the field.
• 52:12
  Mitch Barry: So, you know, we've got coordinators in Australia and, you know, Africa and Southeast Asia and, you know, South America, all different countries, you know, Latin America.
• 52:20
  Mitch Barry: It's a pretty, it's a pretty incredible network of people that are making this happen.
• 52:25
  Mitch Barry: And it's good to give them a plug every once in a while, because there's a lot of people, you know, grinding it out across the world right now that are doing a lot of amazing things, so.
• 52:34
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, that's amazing. I have you guys say behind me, I got some shelducks back here.
• 52:38
  Mitch Barry: I was going to say nice looking paradise shelducks there.
• 52:40
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, I went to New Zealand last year and was able to take those.
• 52:44
  Tyce Erickson: And I'm kind of curious now just to look at You know what Merlin has or eBird has out there and you know to be able to see what these birds do because I have really no clue if they migrate.
• 52:55
  Tyce Erickson: They're on New Zealand so I don't know if they just hang out there.
• 52:57
  Tyce Erickson: It'll be interesting to look at your maps and just see what it kind of says about them too. So
• 53:02
  Mitch Barry: did you get your hands on a shoveler while you were down there?
• 53:06
  Tyce Erickson: Unfortunately, I did not. I was big game hunting there mostly and this gentleman that was Kind of a duck guide took us out and he was a great guy, but I wouldn't say he was really thorough in what he knew and how to hunt him.
• 53:25
  Tyce Erickson: So when we went to the pond, we were hunting, the decoys had been out for weeks and there was like seaweed growing over them, you know?
• 53:32
  Tyce Erickson: And the birds didn't really come into them real that well, but it's really interesting.
• 53:39
  Tyce Erickson: I don't know. Do you guys know much about shelducks?
• 53:43
  Mitch Barry: A bit, yeah, they're pretty unique, but feel free to tell everyone.
• 53:48
  Tyce Erickson: Well, how we hunted them, it was really interesting.
• 53:50
  Tyce Erickson: There were some that came close to the decoys, but we actually took his little Springer Spaniel and ended up...
• 53:56
  Tyce Erickson: Actually walking towards them in the paddocks and they would actually fly towards you and squawk around you at the dog, circling the dog as kind of an aggressive behavior, like almost a bird protecting its babies in a nest.
• 54:12
  Tyce Erickson: And that's actually how we harvested those birds.
• 54:15
  Orin Robinson: It's almost like, you know, coming from a Bird Dog Podcast, those like old tolling dogs that they used to draw birds in.
• 54:23
  Mitch Barry: Might have to use that one if ever go to New Zealand.
• 54:28
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, it was, I didn't believe it when he told me that, but he had a springer and it was white with a black tip tail.
• 54:35
  Tyce Erickson: And yeah, it'd run out there.
• 54:36
  Tyce Erickson: And I'm not sure if it's because there's not a lot of predators in New Zealand, you know, or there's no predators really.
• 54:41
  Tyce Erickson: And the birds, I'm like, I've never seen a duck act this way towards a dog you know ever in my life and it was really it and when he said that yeah sometimes they'll fly towards my dog and like squawk around it and we were kind of on the other side of the field more like this is a joke this isn't gonna work and sure enough like Three of them fly right to him and fly right around him in shotgun range.
• 55:03
  Tyce Erickson: I'm like, okay, now we're going to get some birds. And so sure enough, it's so interesting.
• 55:08
  Tyce Erickson: We just started walking right towards him and that dog was just out hunting around like it was hunting upland game around us.
• 55:13
  Tyce Erickson: And those birds would just lift off and come right towards you and start flying around.
• 55:17
  Tyce Erickson: And we shot, I think, a dozen or so of them. So it was pretty amazing.
• 55:22
  Mitch Barry: That's awesome. That's awesome.
• 55:23
  Tyce Erickson: So anyhow. Well, hey, thanks guys for coming on. I appreciate your time.
• 55:27
  Tyce Erickson: We'll go ahead and wrap her up. Mitch, Orin, appreciate all you guys are doing for the bird world. We hope, obviously, these birds are going to be around a long time and it takes guys like you to educate the public and get that research in so we can help, you know.
• 55:42
  Tyce Erickson: With better conservation of these amazing birds. So thanks
• 55:45
  Mitch Barry: for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. We're always happy to share.
• 55:50
  Tyce Erickson: Yeah, good luck hunting this fall and we'll be in touch. So have a great day.
• 55:54
  Orin Robinson: Awesome, good luck.
• 55:55
  Tyce Erickson: Yep, thanks.