UKC

The original thread’s been archived:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/bird_id-771327

but I finally cracked it after several unsuccessful visits back to the site - it‘s a Lesser Whitethroat, confirmed both by a much clearer view and the Merlin app. The white patches which I thought I’d seen must have been some trick of the light. Really chuffed at this; they‘re pretty uncommon around Berlin, and I hadn’t seen or heard one yet this year. 

Well done, I've yet to see a Lesser Whitethroat since restarting "serious" birdwatching 3 years ago (seen previously in my youth) although I have heard one which stayed obstinately out of sight.

did you hear it sing? could it have been a common whitethroat (reminds me of part of a skylark song)?

youtube.com/watch?v=5fApzVHlBi8&

Yes, definitely a Lesser.

Nice one. Quite a distinctive song. 

Has anyone come across the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Lab? It’s amazing. I’ve only used it for IDing bird song while wondering along the a stretch of the Cornwall coast path this weekend, and found it that really opened my ears to what I am hearing. Heard a curlew!

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org
 

I hadn´t heard one for 3 years, and that was a few hundred km further south where they were all over the place and had a great amount of variation in their songs. So for me: not so distinctive!

You have to be a bit careful with it if you don´t see the bird to confirm. I´ve even had a mallard identified by the app as a rook. Some of the warblers are great imitators; I was watching an icterine warbler sing last week and had the app running; it gave 4 IDs within 10 seconds of spotted flycatcher, tree pipit, icterine warbler and finally kestrel!

No doubt (and now I see that I should have read your first post!) but it has been a revelation to me with my very low base of bird knowledge and so far, where I have been able to confirm its claims, it has been right. I only think of it as making suggestions based on the recording but also (I guess, I haven't yet read much on it) on where I am, what time of day and year it is, what else I have heard etc, matched against some humungous database somewhere. 

Don´t get me wrong, it´s right 99% of the time, and is a very useful tool! It´s connected to the database at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which I believe is the largest of its kind in the world. It´s also being constantly updated by an army of 5,000 co-workers worldwide; you can read a bit about it here:

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/the-story/

Yes, your geographical location is very important, but if you have location allowed turned on that´s automatic.

I've been using the Merlin app for a couple of weeks now...agreed it's pretty amazing. And does seem to be incredibly accurate and fast. Haven't really had the chance to test it on birds I don't know, but yesterday I tried in the local wood. There was a cacophony of birdsong and it identified 5 birds in 2 seconds flat. It then took me another 10 seconds or so to individually ID the list it had thrown up and it was spot on.