An App Worth Hearing About

My oldest daughter started Girl Scouts when she was in second grade. After the pandemic and the shrinking of her social circle to almost nil, it was a decision intended to give her more opportunities to spend time with other girls her age.

One morning in late February of this year, her troop spent a few hours with the Travis County Audubon Society. They learned about different types of birds and their habitats, and then were invited to trek with the guides, binoculars in hand, to try to spot some species in the wild. It was cold, and, to be honest, I could not have been less interested in spending my Saturday morning this way, but one unexpected surprise from the day was the discovery of the Merlin app.

There’s a tool in Merlin called Sound ID that uses the microphone on your device to identify bird species based on nearby sounds. Recently, as the bare limbs in our neighborhood began to fill out with leaves, my daughter and I used the app on a walk to school and discovered seven different bird species chirping and tweeting along the half-mile one-way route. It was unexpectedly delightful.

This past week we have been abroad shooting what is an epic Summer Collection (join SMS to be the first to shop!), and I was able to pull out the app and discover species that I never hear in Austin. I quickly screenshotted the list of identified birds and am looking forward to landing in Austin and sharing them with my daughter. Simple joys.