Warblers are some of the most challenging birds to distinguish between. Larry Meiller and his guest discuss a new app and field guide that makes identifying these small birds much easier.
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New App Promises To Help The Many Birders Who Struggle To Identify Warblers
​Having trouble identifying that warbler in the backyard singing from the top branch? There’s an app for that.
With more than 50 species in the United States and Canada, warblers represent one of the largest bird families on the continent. With their different sizes, colors and calls, they’re also considered some of the hardest birds to identify.
A team of bird researchers have now followed up their book “The Warbler Guide,” published last year by Princeton University Press, with a companion app to help birdwatchers identify species by view or song.
Professional photographer and one-time New York State Big Year record holder Scott Whittle co-created both the guide book and app. He said the app’s coolest feature is probably the 3D graphics that enable users to rotate a bird’s on-screen position to match the exact angle seen in the field. It also provides a bank of easily playable warbler songs.
Whittle said he wanted to take advantage of the digital platform to help somebody identify a bird in ways that even the book can’t do quite as well — plus, he said, an app is more convenient than lugging around a 560-page book along during expeditions.
“The problem with (traditional bird guides) is that they’re sort of like bird dictionaries,” he said. “They list all the birds in a taxonomical order, which is … sort of like if you wanted to learn English and someone handed you a dictionary and said, ‘Here, if you read everything in this book you’ll know English.’”
By making identification easier than ever before, Whittle hopes birders can enjoy the simple beauty of the colorful coats and mellifluous voices of the warblers that pass through each spring and fall.
“Warblers are really some of the most beautiful birds in the whole world, and we’re very lucky have this set of birds come through the United States every year,” Whittle said.
Watch the introduction to “The Warbler Guide” app below:
Episode Credits
- Larry Meiller Host
- Cheyenne Lentz Producer
- Scott Whittle Guest
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