Today's track: Pêche II — H. Hunt

On mornings when the weather is nice and I'm fortunate enough to slow down, I take my coffee outside with the dogs and sit in the backyard.

I pull up the Merlin app, hit record, and let it listen. It identifies every bird call it hears.

If you've never used Merlin — it's free, built by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it's quietly one of the coolest pieces of tech I've put on my phone. Cornell trained it on 750,000 bird recordings annotated by hundreds of experts. It identifies 458 species in North America by sound alone, in real time, offline. Ten million people use it. Cornell built this. It still kind of blows my mind every time I open it.

I screenshot the list of what it heard, drag it into Claude, and add the new ones to my index.

This morning I added two.

I'm up to twenty-six species.

Most people think of their backyard as a patch of grass. Somewhere to grill. Maybe a garden, if they're into it. What if I told you yours is actually a functioning wildlife sanctuary — and you've been walking past it every morning without knowing what's happening out there?

Mine is. In a regular suburban Louisville backyard with a hammock and a few edible plants, over a few weeks of morning listening sessions, I've documented twenty-four species using nothing but a free app and my phone. No nature preserve. No hiking trail. Just my yard.

What's showed up is staggering. A Baltimore Oriole burning orange against the June sky. A Red-eyed Vireo singing from the canopy. Two separate woodpecker species working the bark of the mature trees. A Chimney Swift screaming overhead at altitude. A Gray Catbird tucked into the shrub layer doing its bizarre mimicry act.

And here's what makes it more than just a cool list — each species is a data point about the habitat itself.

The Carolina Wren tells me the yard has dense low cover worth nesting in. The White-breasted Nuthatch confirms mature bark with enough insect life to sustain a bark-hunting specialist. The Red-eyed Vireo certifies that my tree canopy is tall enough to support a neotropical migrant — a bird that just flew back here from South America.

And then there was the morning Merlin picked up a Great Horned Owl at 8:25 AM. Confident detection. No question. Which means a full apex predator has incorporated my yard into its territory. He's tucked into a roost tree somewhere within a couple blocks of my back porch.

Every layer of the habitat — ground to shrub to canopy to the aerial zone fifty feet up — is occupied and productive. That's not luck. That's an ecosystem.

I tell Claude to make it interesting. So it tells me why each bird is cool — whether it's a rare find, where it operates in the sky or canopy, whether its presence means the ecosystem is doing well, or whether it's invasive and quietly causing problems. I enjoy learning all the neat little facts it adds each morning.

Then I'll pull up the actual bird calls and try to match them by ear. Kind of fun. Harder than you think.

A month ago I would have told you my backyard was mostly empty. Now I know better.

The birds were always there. I just wasn't paying attention.

Your yard sits inside ancient flyways and territorial ranges that predate your neighborhood, your city, your country. The birds don't know there's a fence. They're moving through a landscape, and your little patch of it — especially if you have mature trees, dense shrubs, water, or native plants — is being used right now by creatures with seasonal patterns far more interesting than most people realize.

The whole thing has helped me romanticize my backyard, my surroundings. A quiet excuse to connect with nature. Honestly — it makes me feel better.

And it turns out that's not just in my head. There's real science behind it. A 2022 study in Scientific Reports found birdsong was the strongest natural predictor of positive mood and reduced anxiety — stronger than seeing water or greenery. The effect held across cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Cortisol drops. Heart rate variability improves. Your nervous system shifts from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. Researchers call it Attention Restoration Theory — natural soundscapes give your overworked attention system a real break.

Ten minutes of birds and coffee will do more for you than ten minutes of doomscrolling. By a lot.

Might be a nice thing for you to do too. To appreciate what you've already got, right where you are.

My family doesn't quite get my excitement when I tell them about it. Two new species this morning — a Killdeer and a Great Horned Owl. Huge to me. Less so to them. That's fine. I'm working to get my sister and my parents using Merlin and Claude the same way. Romanticizing the place they live. Connecting more. Hopefully you'll find this kind of excitement in your own habitat too.

I do it when I travel, too. Pull out Merlin and Claude wherever I'm staying. See what species I'm missing back home.

It's like Pokemon — gotta catch 'em all.

Not really. But if it makes you slow down and appreciate your home a little more, why not try it?

So I'm doubling down.

This summer I'm spraying wildflower seeds — annuals and perennials — across the whole front and back. Easier to manage. I'll just weedwhack a path to my sitting area and let the rest go wild. With all this rain coming, it should pop off. I'll let you know how it goes.

I put up more bird feeders too. My neighbor has a stranglehold on the hummingbirds, but I'm not conceding — I'm putting up a real effort for them this summer. And the goldfinches are wide open. That's the campaign.

Fun little experiment.

The app is free. Claude makes it interesting. The dogs just like that I'm sitting out there with them — keeping watch for squirrels, chipmunks, birds. Killers, both of them.

Here's the exact prompt I use with Claude when I drop in my Merlin screenshot. Copy it into yours, attach your own bird list, and let it rip:

I send my list to a few friends who run the same routine in their backyards. Gives us something to talk about that isn't work. Try it with your kids. Try it with your parents. Get your in-laws on it and you'll always have something to text about.

Here's the challenge. Tomorrow morning — before you check your phone, before the news, before the noise of the day hits — go outside, open Merlin, and listen for ten minutes. You might get eight species. You might get fifteen. You might catch a Great Horned Owl finishing his night shift before he tucks into a roost tree two houses down.

Your backyard isn't a blank space between your house and the fence. It's a habitat. It's occupied. Once you start paying attention, you'll realize you've been sharing it with an entire world that's been there all along — just waiting for you to notice.

Just a quiet excuse to look up.

Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company | HireMySub.com

The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv

PS: We have someone seeking a 1031
Sweet spot $7-9M
6% CAP acceptable for good location
B to A Retail
Will look at industrial

Let me know!