…and picked 3 deer ticks off of myself. April: a bad time to bushwhack, no matter how enticingly the warblers are singing in those bushes.

I had to strip in the busy trailhead parking lot to change and safely bag the tick clothes before getting in the car. Just another glamorous day as a birder. 😅

The author taking a selfie on a cold looking beach, squinting into the sun while barely holding onto a camera, binoculars, and a spotting scope on a tripod.

a very large horseshoe crab at the edge of the surf

the author’s hand holding a somewhat indignant painted turtle

Small pitch pine trees around the edge of a pond with cranberry plants in it

I got some very pleasant birding done last week. I ran away to the cape and saw a TON of spring migrants, lugged too many optics all the way to race point, watched the gannets diving, spotted a lifer iceland gull, flipped over a trapped horseshoe crab, and helped a painted turtle cross the road.

This also happens constantly in the museum field. Some tech guy will parachute in with a 'revolutionary new idea for a museum app' and it will be immediately clear that they have only the vaguest idea how a museum operates, what museums need, and no concept of learning theory. But they have an app!!

Despite it all, he is still framing this as a) a tech issue to be troubleshot and b) positioning himself, Mr. 'I just started birding a year ago' as the person to 'solve' the 'problem' with the 'process'.

How do you fix engineering brain? How do you explain to someone their framework is the issue?

OP follows up with a final comment, acknowledging the advice but also:

"I really wanted to get more feedback from you all on how the process is for you, and what you like and don’t like about it. It can be any part of the process. I just want to help people have a good experience with birding "

A bunch of people in the comments all give the same good advice (try learning field ID, be more patient and observe for longer, study a field guide, don't worry about perfection, bird without a camera for a bit).

OP says "Part of my problem though is I don't know what all the birds are in the moment, and I don't want to take time away from observing more birds to try and perfectly ID each of them in that moment."

The framing is 'optimizing a tech process' instead of being at the start of a learning journey.

Like. Yes! You are missing the more efficient method! You have substituted a five-step technological process for the intended two-step process of "using your human brain to identify the birds, input birds into list."

Your workflow is convoluted because you've developed a workaround for...learning.

When pressed, he explains that his "process" is taking photos of every bird, importing to computer, exporting them to phone, running them all individually through Merlin photo ID, and then inputting that data into ebird via browser. He wonders if he missed some better, more efficient way to do it.

In this case, OP (an engineer) makes a post saying he's a new birder and then asking what "pain points" others have encountered in "capturing and managing bird data." In the comments, he elaborates that what he's having trouble with is figuring out how to batch-automate Merlin photo ID into ebird.

Comments on a post on r/birding: u/tkohhhhhhhhh . 3d ago Could you perhaps tell us what are the painful parts you're referring to? There may be existing methods that address your pain points without the need for additional development. u/wazawoo OP . 3d ago Specifically, creating checklists after the fact, by going through your photos, is really annoying. If you take too long doing it in the eBird ui and refresh the page, you can lose all your counts. So then, I looked at the process of creating these files as csv first, but that process is very error prone, and you don't know of issues until you try uploading the csv. Another part of that process is the photo ID process after the fact. That is, you're going through a bunch of pictures and ID-ing each of them so you can fill out your checklist. On mobile, this process (for me) involves checking the photos one by one in Merlin, which does work, but takes a long time. I'm normally looking at the photos on desktop and they're not always on my phone yet, which further complicates things. I'd love a way to bulk ID from pictures on desktop. I'm sure it exists, but I would love to use the same ID method that merlin is using under the hood. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available publicly, but I may have missed it. Another one, maybe personal to me, is the ability to easily list the birds I've seen but don't have media of. I have a goal of having a photo of each species, like completing a compendium. Right now, even in the eBird UI, I can't seem to find this info without manually comparing my life list to the unique species I see in my media the media tab.

Something that really frustrates me about a certain type of new birder is the terminally engineer-brained "I have encountered something I do not understand. Clearly this is a tech problem external to me, how do I apply a tech solution?" mindset. 🪶

gouache painting of pussywillow

colored sketch of tulip shoots and a blooming daffodil

it looks like spring in my sketchbook even if it doesn’t feel like spring outside

#naturejournaling #naturejournal #botanicalillustration #sciart

gouache painting of pussywillow

colored sketch of tulip shoots and a blooming daffodil

it looks like spring in my sketchbook even if it doesn’t feel like spring outside

#naturejournaling #naturejournal #botanicalillustration #sciart

Oh thanks, I’ll check those out!

important to note that the last thing I carved on ‘real’ lino was our wedding invites and that DID send me to the ER and I still have the scar, so.

Grey linoleum block with a sketch of an oak branch on it, half-carved.

More printmaking up next. After a lot of playing with EZcut I wanted to do something more detailed, but man do these cheapo speedball carving tools not make it easy. 😵‍💫 I’m dreaming of pfeil……

#printmaking #linocut #botanicalartist

Realizing I should include the main things you should do to support native bees/other insects

1) Plant native plants
2) Don't use pesticides, and tell your friends and neighbors to stop using pesticides
3) Leave fallen leaves in the winter
4) Leave dead stems over winter for overwintering critters

This is totally doable with masks in photoshop. I’m sure there’s a fancy photographer way (focus stacking?) too, but a simple cut + paste and then a layer mask would work fine with that clean background.

SO incredibly round! that’s peak floof performance right there.

Pair of pronghorns in golden grass with leafless mesquite trees, against a wooded mountain rising in the background.

Seeing pronghorns again was really cool. We got a much closer look from the road, but my camera was in the trunk at the time (lesson learned! lap camera!). I'm okay with the distant landscape shot though. It better captures the memory of watching them picking their way cautiously through the grass.

Coati among dead leaves and fallen branches.

Two inca doves perched on a branch, the front dove stretching its wing.

Editing photos from Arizona today to distract myself from the blizzard 🥲. A Coati and a pair of Inca Doves (showing off those pretty rufous primaries) from sunrise at Madera Canyon. 🪶 #wildlifephotography

Two pencil sketches, one of an Emory oak twig and one of a female Costa’s hummingbird feeding its fledgling

An unfinished page but getting to see a female Costa’s feeding her fledgling was SO cool. The baby was such a cute little fluffball sitting patiently on a twig, waiting for mom to come back with breakfast. 🥹

#birdart 🪶 #sciart #naturejournal

Colored pencil drawings of a ponderosa pine lit by dawn light and a twig of creosote

Colored pencil drawings of a tuber anemone, a lupine species, a saguaro cactus with woodpecker holes, and a cactus wren

Some Arizona birding trip sketchbook pages. I’m trying to get into a daily sketchbook habit- drawing more being less worried about making each one perfect. 🪶

#birdart #sciart #naturejournal

(109 species total, that is, not lifers!)

No I lied, we stopped for a walk at a suburban park in PHX before heading to the airport this morning and I snagged an american avocet. 37 lifers for the week, and 109 for the trip 😎

A dawn mountain landscape with saguaro cacti catching the morning sun

A cactus garden with colorful wildflowers in the forground

Last day, Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum and Saguaro Ntl Park. Two more new species, rounding us out to 36 lifers for me and a trip list of 101 species recorded. Not bad! (Pretty great, actually)

pottery vessel in the shape of a bird

indoor day today since we did not come equipped with rainwear, but I still managed to find birds in the Tucson art museum.

Thanks! I was pretty sure it was an Astrolepis sp., and the good people of inat agree with you on the species ID. 😊

reddish rocky outcropping surrounded by sycamores with winter-brown leaves

some sort of fern tucked into a rock crevice

34 lifers in five days, one a self-found rarity. 😎 Up before dawn each day, with 6+ hours of birding daily. I think… I think I may actually need a break from birding.

It’s apparently either spring migration (March-April) or August (monsoon season, you get mexican rarities blown up here). But honestly if you haven’t hit the area before, there are a bunch of fabulous endemics year-round.