Birds, Wildflowers & the Cornell Merlin ID

My favorite wildflower patch is really starting to produce. The milkweed will soon be in full bloom, and color is already bursting out everywhere. In short, in northern Minnesota take a trip to the Hartley Nature Center. Stand in the wildflower garden and hide amongst the taller flowers (read over six feet tall!). If you are motionless, the birds will not be recognized as a dreaded human! Here are a few birds I saw and photographed during a 20 minute window of nice sun around 7:30 am.

One bird I gave me some identification difficulty. Enter the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. Even though I am a Dartmouth Alum, and during my college days I would do everything possible to defeat Cornell in athletics, their bird web services including their new Merlin ID App are fantastic. The word app is actually a bit misleading. Although they have Android and Apple apps, it is the windows PC based Merlin ID app which really takes the cake. I used the Merlin ID App to identify this Nashville Warbler. See the screenshots found at the end of this post document how Merlin functions.

Nashville Warbler