Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab App Reviews

VERSION
3.0.5
SCORE
4.8
TOTAL RATINGS
78,183
PRICE
Free

Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab App Description & Overview

What is merlin bird id by cornell lab app? What's that bird? Ask Merlin—the world’s leading app for birds. Just like magic, Merlin Bird ID will help you solve the mystery.

Merlin Bird ID helps you identify birds you see and hear. Merlin is unlike any other bird app—it's powered by eBird, the world’s largest database of bird sightings, sounds, and photos.

Merlin offers four fun ways to identify birds. Answer a few simple questions, upload a photo, record a singing bird, or explore birds in a region.

Whether you’re curious about a bird you’ve seen once or you’re hoping to identify every bird you can find, the answers are waiting for you with this free app from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

WHY YOU’LL LOVE MERLIN
• Expert ID tips, range maps, photos, and sounds help you learn about the birds you spot and build birding skills.
• Customized lists of birds to find where you live or travel
• Merlin was created by bird experts for everyone.
• Merlin is global—look up any bird at any location.
• Keep track of your sightings—linked to eBird, a global database of more than 1 billion bird observations!


MACHINE LEARNING MAGIC
• Powered by Visipedia, Merlin Sound ID and Photo ID uses deep learning to identify birds in photos and sounds. Merlin learns to recognize bird species based on training sets of millions of photos and sounds collected by birders at eBird.org, archived in the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• Merlin delivers the most accurate results thanks to experienced birders, who curate and annotate sightings, photos, and sounds, who are the true magic behind Merlin.

AMAZING CONTENT
• Choose bird packs that contain photos, songs, and calls, and identification help for anywhere in the world, including Mexico, Costa Rica, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, Australia, Korea, Japan, China, and more.
• It’s available in your language. Merlin is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hebrew, German, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Marathi, Malayalam, Afrikaans, Arabic, Indonesian, Russian, Danish, Thai, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s goal is to help you and millions of others to learn about birds. Our nonprofit mission to improve the understanding and protection of birds and nature is made possible by the generosity of Cornell Lab members, supporters, and citizen-science contributors.

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App Name Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab
Category Reference
Published
Updated 01 February 2024, Thursday
File Size 105.75 MB

Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab Comments & Reviews 2024

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Brings me so much joy. This app enriches my life is such a huge way. It has made birding feel very accessible and fun/easy to learn. A little less than a year ago, I started using Merlin knowing next to nothing about birds on the recommendation of a friend. I’m now using it daily and able to identify so many birds on my own, which I learned thanks to the incredible sound and picture ID available on here. Birding really helps me to be present and enjoy my surroundings while getting a ton of exercise, and I would definitely not be this into birding had it not been for Merlin. I have an evening routine using Merlin and sister app eBird, where I play a little game of seeing how many birds I can identify on my big neighborhood walk. As a UX nerd I’ll also say the UX design is incredible - the app is so intuitive, easy to use, and minimalistic in a way that reduces distractions while you’re enjoying the outdoors.

This app is amazing. I’m a backyard birdwatcher. I grew up learning about birds in our backyard that my father invited with his faithful provision of feeders for the duration of his lifetime. I’ve done the same over my decades of adulthood, but until I started using this app I never realized how many birds were around me all along but not necessarily showing up at feeders. By using this app, my backyard has been revealed as vibrantly alive, rich in a multitude of nature’s beauty that I never imagined. By using the Sound ID feature and decent-enough binoculars, I’ve identified birds I’d never seen before and have come to learn the songs and calls of some birds that alerts me to their presence even if they are not within my sight. Recently the app has identified the presence of cedar waxwing, which I still have never put eyes on and I’m excited to see if I can make the visual match if they continue to be identified at my yard. I feel so much more connected to nature from using this app, which is addictive in a wonderful and fulfilling way!

THE App for Birders. I love Merlin. As a former beginner birder, it was and still is an excellent tool. The sound ID is helpful for double checking ID’s and sometimes alerting me to what is in the area, but out of sight. If there was one thing I could change about the app (to which my birder friends have also complained about), it would be to allow manual markings on birds sighted without going through the ID. For data collection purposes, I can understand the need to be thorough, but personal merlin sightings do not go towards ebird data to begin with. I’d really like the ability to just check off a bird - especially because I was manually keeping track of my list before Merlin. There are many basic birds I would like to add, but I am far from remembering where or when I saw them. (Such as the coot, western bluebird, summer tanager, ect.) A simple list to add or remove sightings would be phenomenal. Otherwise, 5/5 app, I cannot recommend it more to new and veteran birders alike.

Woohoo!! This app is great!!. I’m as new a birder as one can be, so it’s been...overwhelming, to say the least! I moved onto the farm where I work and have 27acres backing a river to trudge through. I have seen so many birds I’ve never seen before and thanks to this app, I can easily and accurately (I can only assume, since I obviously don’t know, but the pictures they show with their guesses are always numerous and clear, I’m quickly able to tell if that’s the bird I saw or not). The more I learn, the more I’m beaming with excitement and I have to thank this app and the creators for giving me that ability to connect the dots, even as a hobbyist who doesn’t have access to all the information. The app is clean, easy to use and understand, jam-packed with maps and gps and photos and information. You can look up any bird in multiple ways, from the bird or the region. I’m sure there’s more I’m missing, because, again, NEWB, but so far this app is everything and more!!

Very useful app. Can be improved.. I’ve been using this app for a couple of years and have really enjoyed identifying birds in my backyard. The good: The picture ID function works quite well, IF you can get a decent picture of the bird. Snapping a photo from far away and then zooming in with a photo app usually does not suffice. The recent addition of the sound ID is phenomenal! I can sit in my patio, start the recording and find all the birds making music. I recently recorded a summer tanager, a bird I’ve yet to see but know they’re around. Saving birds to the bird for Life list is a convenient and easy way to save what birds I’ve observed. My list is small compared to experienced birders but I find this is a fun way to save my experiences. The could be better parts In the Exploring birds section, I can type in the name and find my bird. I just did this with a Baltimore Oriole which I hadn’t seen at my feeders until now. Unfortunate, from this part of the app, I cannot save to my Life List! Very frustrating! Even more frustrating is the bird ID section would not bring up the Baltimore Oriole at all! If it had, I could add to my life list but unfortunately, this section of the app fails often. I changed the parameters in many different ways but to no avail. I’m not quite sure why the app won’t bring up the Baltimore Oriole since this is a very distinct black and Orange bird. No doubt about. Fixing these two issues would up the rating to a solid 5.

Magical app, but still needs one CRITICAL feature. This app is extremely easy to use and accurate for identifying birds based on both sighting characteristics and photos. The photo identification feature nearly aligns with Arthur C Clarke’s third law, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and hence the app name of Merlin is extremely appropriate. HOWEVER, it does not allow you save your bird history, DESPITE the app explicitly stating that your sighting “response has been recorded to improve Merlin’s accuracy.” Such an oversight is nearly inexcusable, as it requires you to save your own screenshots or enter the info in a separate document or in eBird (for which both the interface and ease-of-use are greatly inferior to and clumsier than those of Merlin). I am practically begging the developers to add a bird history/tracking function to this app ASAP (as they have claimed to have been working on for at least the last six months), as I would be more than willing to pay for such functionality and the app would no doubt merit the full five out five stars.

Amazing App for easy Bird ID. This app is wonderful! I knew next to nothing about birds until a Eastern Goldfinch landed in my bird bath one day spurring interest into exactly what the name of this beautiful bird was. I searched inline but characteristics I described didn’t help me find what I was looking for so I checked in the App Store for a bird identification app finding many games but only a couple of identification apps I downloaded 3 but found this to be the best for me. Since then I have become an avid bird watcher! The app is easy to use even for me. I was disabled by a drunk driver in 05’ & fed up with tv so great to find a hobby I can enjoy outdoors. Even my parents joined in & my daddy after suffering a head injury himself in 2011 took up the hobby along with wood working. Together we would make feeders & houses to help attract more birds. He would build & I would paint different types of houses I researched on the website to help attract birds of all types. Unfortunately We lost him to cancer in February of this year (2018) but the time we spent birding together these past 7 years is something I’ll always hold near & dear to my heart. Thanks so much to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Birds in the Hand, & the developers of the Merlin Bird ID for providing us with this wonderful app that has given me some very sweet memories & a wonderful hobby.

Sound ID is a powerful tool, unfortunately it sometimes crashes. As other reviewers have said, the sound ID function is quite amazing and justifies using this otherwise mediocre birding app. Merlin can easily identify a dozen different species all singing in a dawn chorus, occasionally identifying a bird that I didn’t even hear myself. For example, the other morning Merlin identified a brown thrasher, which surprised me because I had neither seen nor heard any, but by tapping the bird’s name on the playback screen, Merlin played back the part of the recording that had the thrasher singing, and I was able to confirm for myself that it was a correct identification by then playing the pre-recorded calls in Merlin’s library (I’ve never had Merlin mis-identify a bird call, but I still listen to double check when I’m not sure) My only complaint is that the app inexplicably and unpredictably locks up, apparently in some kind of infinite loop because my phone will overheat when this happens, and it’s difficult to get the task manager up to terminate Merlin. Restarting the app always fixes the problem, and it only happens occasionally, but nonetheless I’m docking 1 star until this is fixed.

Still My Go-To!. Merlin has always been the first ID app I open and the sound ID is absolutely indispensable. While I’m now able to bird by ear, I like the extra help with uncommon migrants that pop in for a few days each year. It’s also nice to have Merlin back up my IDs on lifers or when I submit rarities. With that said, it’s not infallible so some common sense needs to be used: if it’s telling you you’re hearing a bird that’s wildly out of range, it’s probably wrong. I don’t trust it unless it IDs the same species in two different recordings. But I absolutely recommend this app to birders off all skill levels. [Previous Review circa 2015] I've been using Merlin for almost a year and I love it. It has almost never failed to give me the correct ID. I have some of the expensive birding apps and Merlin outshines them. The search returns the birds that are most likely based on eBird data, so you don't get hypothetical birds that you'll never see. I really appreciate the fact that Merlin recognizes both male and female field marks because so many apps focus only on the male. I highly recommend this app to anyone who needs to ID birds--beginner or expert.

Love it!!!🦅🕊🦉🐦. This app is really cool, and I think it will be helpful! I haven’t really gotten a chance to try it out much but I live in Iowa and I am going on a camping trip near the Canadian border in Minnesota soon and can’t wait to try it out. I’ve been browsing through the stuff and testing the app out, like trying to get the app to think of European starling, And a while ago I think I saw a great egret but I wasn’t exactly sure, I tried to look on here but it wasn’t able to show me it might have been how I was trying to identify it and where I put the marker I don’t exactly know where saw it. Something I would like to see added to the app is skipping a category, like the location or the date because sometimes you don’t exactly know when you saw the bird, or where it was, just an option to skip would be nice. otherwise I absolutely love this app! I like how you can listen to the birds sounds, and just browse through bird categories! Another fun option to the app would be to interact with other burgers and share what you have seen!🦆! I will definitely be recommending it to my bird friends! thanks!!!😁

Amazing Features - Hours of Fun. This app has brought so much joy to my life as a beginning birder. It is so well designed. The Sound ID is one of my favorite features, as is the ability to see Likely Birds, which I can customize according to time and location. I love being able to see what birds are my in area and watching that change day to day and week to week. I can also see what birds I might see when I travel, and can plug in my travel dates for better accuracy. I am truly grateful for this app. The one area of identification I currently struggle with is hawks. I have found some great resources online that have been helpful, but it would be great if Merlin could incorporate some more information into their various hawks and raptors. I would love to be able to see a scale of sizes, for instance. I do think the Bird ID is excellent but could be improved for greater accuracy.

Great App, Small Flaw. Merlin is such a great app, and really fun to use and look for birds. It’s a great beginner app if you’re just starting out birding, but good for more experienced people too. The pictures are almost always extremely helpful, as are the maps, descriptions, and sounds. I haven’t tried photo or sound ID yet since I don’t have a good camera and usually don’t have the availability to record birds, but if I ever do I’m excited to try them. My only complaint is that when I want to add a bird to my life list, I have to go through Bird ID and have the bird I’ve identified as my bird appear as an option in order to select it. Usually this works fine, but often the bird I want to add doesn’t appear on the list, even if I fiddle with my selections. I can sign onto eBird and add it to my life list there, which will appear in the app and is fine, but as I’m more of an amateur birder I don’t find it necessary to have that much detail and it’s a pain to do. It would be helpful to have a place in the Merlin app to add to your life list without having to go through Bird ID.

Excellent birding by ear accuracy!. I learned bird songs many years ago, and birding by ear is now second nature. I have used the sound portion of this app for a few days now, and it’s very accurate. It’s sensitive to faint sounds at a great distance. It helps me focus on calls and songs I might otherwise have overlooked, for example during dawn chorus in spring! Some calls (not songs) it can’t yet ID - for example, pine siskin - and once it mis-ID’d a brief sound as a green heron (no water for 1/4 mile). But generally, even its ID of warbler and flycatcher short chips is correct. But, so far, for approximately 40 different species - probably 300 birds total - in various locations, the accuracy is astounding. The fact that when the bird sings a second and third etc time, the bird’s ID photo lights up yellow is a great educational feature for people new to matching sounds with the ID. Highly recommend the app.

Loads of fun. Let me begin by stating I never use the original function of describing the bird I see. If I can see it that we’ll, chances are I can identify it without Merlin. The same goes with the photo ID feature—if I can get close enough and get a good enough look , I can ID the bird as well as Merlin can. I have tested out the photo ID, and I believe it would be a useful tool for beginners. Be aware that it’s not perfect: it has just as hard a time distinguishing between sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks as I do. Where the app really shines is in the sound ID. At first I was a little skeptical. One of the first times I used it it thought that one bird was both a common raven and an American crow. Same thing with some gulls. It thought there was both a California and Herring gull. I eventually found one I could call a California, the Herring gull never materialized. It also thought there was a tundra swan, but upon reviewing the recording, there was nothing there, and definitely no swan within my sight. The more I have used it, however, the more confident I become in its ID power. Generally, if Merlin disagrees with what I thought the sound was, I’ll try to track it down and find it. And more often than not, I find what Merlin told me was there. But the most fun I have had with this app was watching a northern mockingbird singing while Merlin picked out thirteen different bird songs that one mockingbird had learned and incorporated into its repertoire.

Simply the best app ever. I have never found an app that is this useful in my life! My only complaint is that I now have a half dozen bird books that have been rendered superfluous. I especially like the sound ID feature, which obviously is not a possibility with books. Thus far I have found it to be accurate and strong enough to pick up even distant calls. Another great feature is the list of likely birds based on date and location. One question I have regarding the bird packs: Why is the Midwest pack nearly five times as data intensive as the pack for the entire US? I’m only now beginning to compile my life list, and this feature too looks to be very useful. I’m a baby boomer who was a late adopter of cell technology, and I must admit, this app convinces me of the potential value. I recently identified a song I’d been hearing for years, a black-capped chickadee. I was long familiar with most of its sounds, but I never knew that the mournful, two note descending song was also part of its repertoire! Terrific, thanks so much.

Always peaceful and calming to use this app. Merlin bird id has not only helped me identify birds but has also helped me bring comfort and calmness to my mornings without me even intending to. I downloaded this out of sheer boredom and I now have such gratitude and admiration for all that worked to create this app and help others easily learn about birds. I feel more connected with nature now that I’m able to hear a bird and know exactly what it is. I know this review seems a little much but for a long time I had no interest in doing anything and this along with some other things was the start to my appreciation of the earth and nature which has seriously helped bring me out of a deep darkness and I sincerely thank the creators of this app. I hope that children will use this and be educated with the importance of birds and how they improve our ecosystem so that maybe they won’t be as destructive as we are now. I believe the ignorance of the role wildlife and how it benefits us contributes a lot to its destruction. Anyways have a good day and thank you for reading :)

Outstanding app very easy to use, intuitive! Thank you Cornell!. This is an outstanding app! I rank this app #1 for information, ease-of-use, intuitiveness, fun! When I see a new bird, I can quickly identify it by typing just it’s color before it flies away! I’ve identify birds, my there song. The app is so sensitive. I didn’t even realize how many other birds were in the area and it told me their names too. Then, I can play their song back to them because there are hundreds of pre-recorded songs available on the app. If I want to test my knowledge up, Orthology, I can listen to songs and try again if I the birds myself. Due to the rise of rocks and predatory birds in my area, the app helps me to log the birds are in my backyard. I was using Cornell’s website then they switched to this app. Since developing the app, they’re having constant improvement. Thank you Cornell. I’ve had many many surgeries due to two car accidents. Watching my birds brings me such joy. This app makes it even better. I donate monthly to Cornell to save the birds and contribute to their research.

Great app w/ a couple bugs. Different people have recommended this app to me, and I’m glad I finally got it! I’ve been learning about local birds for years now; the app is pretty easy to navigate, but I’m not sure how it would feel if I was brand new to birding. My favorite part has been adding birds to my life list and having access to many different bird calls. If you want to be able to identify birds by their sounds, this is a great place to start. My only frustration has been that it doesn’t always suggest the bird that you’re looking for after putting in the criteria. I sometimes have to go back and adjust the size of the bird or where I saw it in order for it to come up. This has happened mostly with scrub jays and acorn woodpeckers. I’m also not sure why it won’t let me add condors to my list. I’ve seen them several times soaring over southern California mountains but the app doesn’t generate the bird when I put in the criteria. Overall, I’ve definitely enjoyed using the app!

Easily learn about birds!. The magic of Merlin is how it quickly narrows down the most likely bird. Great for beginners. 5 basic multiple choice questions (where, when, size, main colors, and what was the bird doing) will give a short list of birds that almost always has the bird in front of you. Or use photo id if you are close enough to get a good picture. Sound id can identify multiple birds simultaneously and then you can listen to recordings of each to learn what song goes with which bird. Great pictures, descriptions, multiple sound recordings of each species and maps make it easy to learn all about each bird. All this info does make the bird pack file sizes rather large, but start with at least your regional bird pack and you will see how great it is. Add bird packs of other regions if you are traveling there. This app can quickly and easily open you up to the world of birds around you and get you smiling about adding another bird to your life list of all the birds you have identified.

Sound Id is great, prompts for email are bad. I’ll start with what I love. The Sound ID is fantastic!! Through that feature alone I’ve ID’d many birds in my yard I didn’t know I had. It highlights the bird, plus back the sound it heard to ID it, and saves the recordings to listen back to which helps me learn the sounds. Now the part I don’t like is very annoying. I’ve been using this app for over a year and it keeps telling me my free trial has expired and I need to verify my email. I’ve done that, and I can even log onto my online Merlin account. But for some reason the app keeps popping up with this. I have figured out a couple work arounds but they don’t always work. First, I click the feature I want (sound ID) as soon as the app opens. If I wait even 3 seconds it won’t work. Second is if it pops up with the prompt I close the app and restart it. That is less likely to work but has worked about half the time. I would like to see a fix for this issue in an update. Love the features but stinks if you can’t even get to them for the prompt.

Excellent app. This app works very well, and has helped me learn bird calls. The ability to easily look at various pictures of one species helps a lot too, many ID books are lacking in providing images of basic/alternate plumage, male/female/juvenal birds, and various levels of feather wear, but this app usually has plenty of pictures to find examples of most conditions in which you would commonly find a bird. On issue I have is that the MacOS version window cannot be adjusted for size, I would really like to be able to extend the window vertically to be able to see more birds at once, this would greatly improve the app for a sort of passive learning of bird calls, and a feature where you couuld put several species into a quiz to allow yourself to try and improve identification between several tricky similar birds would be extremely helpful (I would gladly fork over 5-10$ for such a feature) for ID. The interfacing with EBird is also a really awesome feature.

Great beginner app and has advanced features. This app is great for the beginner with how it is configured with five inputs the birder is asked to supply(color, location, behavior, date, and size). It gives likely birds to the user can select that match the bird they saw. The sound feature is great for an advanced birder as it allows identification based on the sounds being heard, that it matches with bird calls. This feature has allowed me to identify birds that I may not have been aware of. The down side to the app is it often will not show a rare or uncommon bird which is highly frustrating. It would be nice to have other or expanded inputs such a fourth color and beak type or other identifiers. The life list is really nice but if you can’t add a bird you know you’ve seen because it’s rare and the app won’t show it is irritating. It would also be nice to allow someone to add a bird thru the Explore Birds feature when you don’t get a match….

Fails on me frequently, otherwise would be great. I’m shocked this app still has 5 stars overall. I’ve used Merlin Bird ID for years and it really simplified the identification process. When I first started using it there was only a limited database and it was still being expanded so I was very forgiving when I bumped into its limitations. At this point though, I just get annoyed and mad that I can’t ID the birds I’m spotting. The app doesn’t let you ID birds it doesn’t believe are in your area, and it also doesn’t let you manually ID birds by name in the event the search doesn’t bring up your bird. For example, in Southern California I had a Red Shouldered Hawk in my neighborhood for several weeks. I thought it was very strange because they’re not normally in the area and I double, triple and quadruple checked the bird with various apps and field references listening to his call and markings to make sure it wasn’t the standard Red-Tailed Hawk. I wanted to ID the bird in Merlin to help the database and other birders but the app wouldn’t let me. Once again, this time in Maine, I’m staring at an Indigo Bunting (rare) eating at a feeder. Even with the regional packs downloaded Merlin won’t let me ID the bird. Very disappointing.

Very pleased!. I’m happy with the accuracy of the sound recording identification. I watch birds daily that visit my bird feeders and perch in the shrubs/trees I planted for them. It’s my meditation time to sit outside and watch the name of the bird highlighted I’m hearing while watching them. Perfect for familiarizing yourself with different bird sounds. The accuracy is insane close by 98% accuracy over 10 hours of time personally doing a trial myself. Studies show therapeutic results lifting depression 8 hours after hearing bird calls. For fun you can end the recording and it shows and drop down of all the recordings of sounds each bird can sing. You can play back each one. Today I played the blue jays different songs on my phone and the blue jays outside joined in a chorus. My moms face lit up with a smile and the joy of birds signing along when I showed her. Get this app now it’s worth every relaxing and joyful moment spent using it. Cheers!

Great app!. The app has definitely improved over the years. As with any app like this, it is important to confirm by listening to what was recorded and comparing to matches while also excluding other noises. My one wish for this app is that there would be an option to save or discard or something like that once you hit stop recording. If you amass a lot of recordings, it takes up a lot of space and you have to scroll to the bottom of the list to delete, since every recording is saved. Along the same theme - it would be awesome to identify some common non-bird species that sound like birds. It would also be great to be able to save specific clips in the app without having to export and edit. Being able to create one’s own library from identified bird clips would be awesome. Although I can appreciate that the app is more about identification, these features would improve the user experience. Great app! Looking forward to seeing how it develops in the future! Thank you!

Great, but could be smoother and quicker for sound identification. This app has helped me learn and pay attention to sound qualities I didn’t used to discern, vastly increasing the accuracy of my birding by ear. My most frequent frustration is when I lose the chance to record an infrequent sound, because it can take so many clicks and scrolls to get to the Start new recording activator. I wish as soon as I open the screen, no matter whether I last looked at data for a bird with twenty song and call variations, or if there was no match, or if there were 8 species heard, that I could see and touch the Record function in one step. Instead, the passing bird is gone out of range too often, or stopped calling or singing. My second frustration is that there’s no quick way (at least that I have found) to delete a recording in which the target wasn’t registered. I wish there was a Delete last recording button right on the screen with the No match report, and also on ones where a plane or truck noise took over the recording. All that said, I often recommend this app to birders who haven’t tried it yet. Thanks

Best resource for the novice birder.. I’ve had this app for a few years now and just wanted to test it out. It’s probably not very helpful that I’m just now getting around to it. I was initially pretty disappointed at first because the number of species specific to Alaska was fairly limited. It took a little time, but they rolled out regional specific bird packs. It just blew up from there and became my go-to app for identifying birds. The photo ID feature is pretty great, but limited only by the quality of my phone camera. It’s usually pretty accurate though. I’ve just gotten way more interested in birds I really didn’t pay attention to before! The app is great and if you enjoy birds of all sizes in your area, chances are this app will be instrumental in identifying them. I think I use it more than any other app I have. Oh yeah, I also really love the bird sounds feature. This is also very useful when you can’t necessarily see the bird, but you might have a close idea of what it could be. Do check it out, this is well put together app overall. I wonder if they’ll have a feature where you could identify simply by recording a song or a call? I’m excited for any new developments in the future!

Wish this and Audubon would mix. For the most part I like this app (though I’m not a fan of the new update that makes it so you can’t search all birds, but only by areas), but I wish it and the Audubon app would combine to have the best of both. Merlin has picture and sound ID, which is great. Audubon makes it easy to see if there have been any reported sightings in your area of a specific bird or just the general sightings. With Audubon you can also search birds easier and add one if you already know what it is, where Merlin makes that difficult. Just this morning, I saw a blue jay (which aren’t really supposed to be in my area, but have been for the last few years) and Merlin wouldn’t give it as a possibility (only giving stellers jays which are actually supposed to be here) but I couldn’t mark it as seen in this app because it wouldn’t give me blue jay as a possible bird, and I couldn’t just add it like in Audubon. You also can’t edit your sightings in this app, so make sure you get your date, location and bird right or it’ll be stuck incorrect in your sightings forever.

Wholesome fun!. Let's be honest, I don't do reviews unless something is that awful or that great! Luckily it's the latter! Incredibly functional (and fun) features! Moved into the mountains and put up a window feeder. When I started seeing some cool looking birds I looked them up on Google, quickly found the app to ID them and I was sold! It's amazing at giving you the correct bird result. And don't even get me started on the sound ID! Omg we heard the weirdest freaking sound one night, I opened it up.. Instantly popped up whip-poor-will! And the sound ID is also an incredibly satisfying tool when you're somewhere where several kinds of birds are. My 2 year old begs me to open it so she can see the picture of the bird when it catches it's calls and it lights up with 5-7 different ones! And for the technically interested it will pinpoint which bird is making which call! I'm not a bird watcher.. just a nature lover and I have a whole new appreciation and curiosity for birds!

I really like this app. I am a beginning bird watcher since moving to the country and it’s helped me to identify species that I just don’t see in the city, like the acorn woodpecker, the California scrub jay and even the turkey vulture. The only disadvantage is that one must be very specific about where the birds are seen. If you have a birdbath and you put in “swimming or bathing “ the search will yield mostly aquatic species and you probably won’t find what you are looking for. Best to put in “on a tree or fence “ unless you are at a lake or something, and you know that it’s an aquatic species. Just FYI. Use the companion app eBird to report and record your results. It’s got a link to Merlin so you can search as you’re out birding or just on a hike somewhere. Birds are so cute even though they can be dicks like raiding other birds nests and stuff (something I’ve seen and it’s quite upsetting). But it’s nature! It’s not really kind. I don’t see nearly as many starlings as I did in the city which is gratifying. In case y’all don’t know they’re an invasive species that should be removed with extreme prejudice wherever they are found in America. Anyway, thanks for putting the app out to the general public! Love it!

Pretty good overall. It’s pretty good! Very helpful, but could be better. I shouldn’t have to drag the map every time I want to enter a bird I see in my backyard. It should default to my home or have a list of locations we can save and choose from instead of having random “this is where we think you saw it” on a map that is nowhere near my location. I’ve already saved my home as a place so why can’t it default? Weird. There should also be a function for me to enter the bird I see instead of going through all the IDing steps, it gets tedious and I can only imagine with the backyard bird count how less than pleasant tracking everything in the app will be. I’m happy to do so, but I feel like it’ll take a lot longer than necessary. We all know what juncos and scrub jays look like, we should be able to enter the birds we’re familiar with without ten steps of questions first. But! Glad this app exists, I’m by no means a bird expert, just a backyard bird enthusiast. Just wish it was a little more streamlined.

Magnificent Tool!!. I have a strong background in bird ID. I’m not exactly sure when in my youth that came about, but as a middle-aged fella, I got the urge to take a more systematic approach to bird ID. For example, my wife and I were walking back to the car after witnessing the Northern migration off the Washington coast when I saw a bird in a tree chattering at us. I looked at it through my binos, puzzled for a moment, and then said to my wife, “It’s not a black bird.” After a bit more puzzling, I said, “I think it’s a cow bird.” Did I have any clue what a cow bird was? Nope! Could I have described it to you? Nope! But somewhere in my earlier years (beyond memory) I became familiar w/ cow birds. Huh? Well, then I pulled up this fabulous app, found the cow bird and starting playing calls until I cam to one that was identical to the one that the bird above me was chattering on repeat. Cool experience w/ the app and w/ delving into some unknown recess of bird knowledge I never knew I had.

Download for Loads of Birding Fun!. I started this app about a week and a half ago, and I’m loving it! I can identify any singing bird, and almost any picture of a bird! It identifies your description of a bird, too! You can also search for birds in your area, and play the calls. I’ve been able to play White Breasted Nuthatch, Cardinal, Robin, House Sparrow, House Finch, and Ruby-Throated Hummingbird sounds, and all with a reaction! The biggest reaction I got from a bird was a hummingbird, that was my first time playing the sounds. After a few times, she flew 2 feet away from my face! She looked really stunned, wondering what was going on. After a few seconds, she flew back to her perch in a tree and answered my call all the times after that. Just two problems. 1: When I was having fun with the app and trying to get a Mourning dove, no matter what I tried it wouldn’t give me it. 2: Sometimes there are sound bugs, which I completely understand. One time there was a sound in my house and it thought it was a Brown-Headed Cowbird. Anyway, I think I just heard a hummingbird’s mating call! Better go see them, Bye! Also, download this app for 100% guaranteed bird identification!

Great for a beginner like me. I love birds and want to learn more about them. I have been hesitant to join birdwatchers as I’ve heard via birder email lists the experienced birders can be impatient and critical of newbies and also make it hard for newbies to join any groups. It’s like breaking into a click. That said, I felt I needed to learn before I even got started so I tried Merlin ID. I have used all 3 tools and find each one useful. I’m most excited about the sound ID though. This app is not perfect and you should question a match that seems questionable, like if it gives you a “rare” match. Do some research by listening to the call options to see if the match is authentic. This app also doesn’t recognize every bird. But, when there isn’t a match just submit the recording to Merlin so they can further improve the app. It is constantly improving and can only do that if we all help out. One day, I heard a bird but couldn’t see it. The sound tool identified the bird so then I knew what to look for and sure enough, I was able to visually identify said bird! I was super excited and encouraged. I also enjoy reading about each bird, the various photos and learning the different calls and songs. I’ve begun to share this with my daughter and grandkids when we take walks. My grandson lights up when he is able to see photos of the birds he is hearing and he’s only 2.5. Fun for the whole family!

Nothing Short of Amazing. The speed and sensitivity of the Sound ID function is startling. It appears to be able to process several birds at nearly the same time. I can’t speak to it’s accuracy yet, because I haven’t had that many opportunities to visually confirm the sound IDs. But even if accuracy is only ok (and I suspect it’s much, much better than that), the app has already been invaluable to me as a novice birder. It has sped up my learning tremendously. Hearing the actual call as the app gives the bird’s name, and then seeing pictures of that type of bird on the app - this is exactly what I need to build those associations in my memory. And then being able to read a bit about it’s behavior and listen to the variety of its calls and songs provides context, and hones in on consistencies and variations of that bird’s call. Watching the app sort out the calls of over half a dozen birds as they call and respond in the morning, again and again, is really helping me learn how to tell them apart and name them. I’ve taken two birding classes and I use two different field guides, but none of those have helped me learn birds as much as this app. This is exactly what I needed!

Algorithm problem. It has come to my attention that the algorithm used to show likely birds in a region is flawed. The algorithm occasionally causes rare birds to appear common at certain hotspots. My guess to how this happens is likely due to the birding community discovering a rare bird and sharing that info with their community. Then people from all over show up and enter the bird into eBird. This causes a large number of people to report the same single bird. As a result the algorithm will occasionally tell you birds like a scissor-tailed flycatcher is common at Arcadia Marsh, MI. When as far as I can tell it was only seen on one day by many people. Or it could tell you that a lazuli bunting or a painted bunting are common at Whitefish Point, MI when in fact there are very few historic reporting a of either of those birds statewide. An improvement could be made by changing the algorithm to factor in the number of birds reported per checklist for example (10 trumpeter swans) along with the number of days the bird has been seen over a period of time. This would prevent anomalous inaccurate results for a single bird that was seen up to hundreds of times on only 1 day. Aside from that the app is excellent at what it was made to do. As a predictive tool of what birds you may find in a given region, extra research is required to double check Merlin’s findings.

Sound ID has been amazing. I kinda rolled my eyes when this feature was added, expecting it to be wildly inaccurate. This has not been the case. I’m blown away by how well it’s worked. I’ve been able, on several occasions, to actually call birds in using the provided, documented recordings to get a better look and confirm the ID. I would give this a 4.5 if possible. My only complaint is something I believe can and will be fixed in the future. When using sound ID, after the app has offered a suggestion, it would be great if you could tap on and link directly to that bird for specific identification. Right now, you basically have to back out and start the traditional ID process from scratch when you already know what bird you’re looking at. On occasion, you’re not lead to the bird you are already certain you’ve seen and heard. A quick link between the sound ID and the actual individual species page where you can confirm “this is my bird!” would be an amazing improvement. In general, thank you for an amazing app!

Vastly Improved - A Splendid Tool for Aging Ears. I use Merlin Audio ID as a field tool nearly every outing. Having accrued 70 years, my ears are not as sharp and are particularly when there is background noise. My MO is to activate Merlin recording when I arrive at a site. I give Merlin a minute to listen when I and other city/car noise are minimized. Then I have a look what Merlin believes he has heard. Often he will catch a fragment or a high pitch I might have missed. Sometimes he is confused by the confluence of five or more species simultaneously occurring but more recently he has become more effective in unraveling these perhaps by voice map recognition which can isolate a single image from a melange. Admittedly, Merlin makes mistakes but the red dot warning alerts remind us to double-check. On the other hand, Merlin is also helpful when he identifies a rare bird which is in the “packs” you have downloaded but a species you have never heard (or seen before) helping you find an unexpected RARITY, or a LIFER! Another scenario is a common bird that is present but ignored because it is common but is, in fact, rare on the early or late date you are seeing it. Merlin IDs it and when you make your observation report their is the Robin or House Sparrow you hadn’t noticed but Merlin documented! MERLIN AUDIO IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE PHOTO ID and I CONTRIBUTE TO eBIRD REGULARLY TO SUPPORT “MERLIN AUDIO”

Great free app.. This is a fun and easy to use bird ID app. Generally I know the birds in my area but I don’t know all their calls and some birds are similar. Once you’ve recorded and stop, you can click on the green arrows and there are examples of all their calls (though some alarm calls are missing). On a early spring morning when birds are chatty and finding mates, I’ve picked up 17 birds. However, I think two of them were really a Mockingbird imitating a Purple Martin and Kildeer on the shoreline and I hadn’t seen either. So, it’s good to listen to a Mockingbird’s own sounds and if a bird you haven’t seen comes up quickly with the Mockingbird, it may not be Merlin’s fault. It did pick up the sound of my door opening as a Loon but we don’t have any. When signing up, when you choose the pack it’s good to choose your area so there are less mistakes. The photo ID works pretty well so far. When you explore birds in the app, some birds say rare that really aren’t, e.g. Mergansers have become common in the winters here mostly in brackish waters. It’s possible that it might mix up juvenile hawks that all have white breasts with brown drippy markings. You can go to Cornell Lab’s website and learn how to recognize their differences, the length of their tail feathers being one way. It’s helpful and fun and surprisingly picks up bird sounds even when there’s traffic noise.

Take it with a grain of salt. Overall great app. Being able to see your life list with actual birds is incredible! However, there are some fatal flaws. For one, the filters for the likelihood of species is bar chart correlated and not expert review, so it often displays strange and outright incorrect results. Secondly, and more importantly, is that it’s creating new birders that rely too heavily on the sound and photo ID features. The old method of hearing a bird and then finding it enough times until you recognize it just by ear has become obsolete. This is ok if Merlin was more accurate than a typical birder but it absolutely is not. I’ve tested merlin in mountain terrain and it has gotten about 90% correct species… and then it said water rail… on a glacier… in Montana. Additionally, it is terrible at picking up more distant or obscure calls. Thus it either doesn’t give you a result or a flawed one. So take all results with an incredibly large grain of salt. I tend to shoo people away from this feature even if that comes at the cost of a few less lifers on their end. For me, it’s the quality of scientific data that trumps all.

Useful with a major flaw. The app is overall quite useful for identifying birds and the audio references are great. What needs to change is your ability to add birds to your life list. There are times when I spot a bird, and I already know what bird it is, and I get excited to add it to my life list which is a great feature to have, but I *can’t*, which is super frustrating. You *have* to use the bird identifier to add a bird to your list, and there are times when I can’t for the life of me figure out what combination of answers I’m supposed to give the identifier to get it to suggest the bird I’ve already identified, so I just can’t add it. Then I search by name and there’s my bird, but no way to report my sighting. How crazy is that? Today it was a group of 6 cedar waxwings in the tree outside my window. I tried every combination of brown, gray, white, and even yellow and black with sizes of robin sized between a robin and a sparrow, and I never could get it to suggest waxwing, so it will not go on my list. This has happened multiple times now and at this point I’m going to give up on my life list because it defeats the purpose to not be able to track all my sightings.

Amazing tool, but a few minuscule issues. This app is amazing. I use it every time I go bird watching, and it is far more efficient than most of the manuals I own. However, it is not without its minor faults. The first and most blaring is the fact that Isee many birds with many more than only 3 colors, and when I see birds with only 3 or less colors they might be different colors than I have the options I have to pick from! I understand that there are limitations that make it difficult, but the app would be that closer to perfect if you added more colors and the option to pick more than three colors. The other issue is that on a very slim chance I cant find the bird im looking for! This is for the most part my fault, but I think that sometimes it is because the bird isn’t on the list of birds registered on the app. It could also be because of the pictures of the birds do not include all or most variations of the bird I see, so I cannot confirm my sighting. If the roster of birds was filled up more, and there was more pictures, then all of those problems would be solved! It is such a great app with such great features and it almost never fails me. The only issues it has are so minor, or could be fixed in an update soon, that it makes them nearly irrelevant. Because of all of this the app is virtually perfect, and i recommend all bird watchers newbies and veterans alike to download this app.

Great for North America, a bust for Australia. The only thing I use Merlin for is sound recognition. It's almost miraculous how accurate it's been for me in North America, even for birds at a considerable distance. On a 10-week stay in eastern Australia, I downloaded the southeastern Australia package, which isn't trivial in size at >400MB. To my dismay, it didn't identify a single birdsong there, not even what turned out to be common species singing very close to where I was standing. Apparently the Merlin Australian packages are all about identifying birds by appearance, but in the dense forests and shrublands there, birds are far more often heard than seen. When I can see birds, I don't want to be looking at my phone scrolling through the choices. I take a photo or memorize as many details as I can and then use the excellent Australian Bird Guide (Menkhorst et al., 2023) book when I get back to my vehicle. The failure to identify any birdsongs was a disappointment. Without bird sound recognition I had no use for the Merlin southeastern Australian package and deleted it.

Adore it but some problems. I have been using Merlin since I started birding a couple years ago and I absolutely love it! My only complaint is that after one of the updates some of the bird profiles are not showing up for me. By that I mean when I click on it the bird the app refuses to show me the pictures that go along for ID so when I want to ID a bird that I know is a warbler in fall plumage I don’t have a reference and it can be really frustrating. Apart from that I love the set up and bird packs. One suggestion I might have for the bird ID is to maybe give an option to specify if you knew it was a waterfowl or not because or something along those lines because guesstimating what will make the app understand you can be a bit difficult especially when you see the bird from a distance. And lastly just a funny story I guess. I was in my back yard using the sound ID and it claimed there was a trumpeter swan in my area (which let me tell you there are not) I go back to play the recording and lo and behold the app interpreted a car horn as a trumpeter swan 😂.

Great app! But.... I have really enjoyed using this app even though I was an experienced birdwatcher before I downloaded this app. It asks very simple questions as to size, color, activity, etc. that make it rather easy to identify many of the birds that are commonly found in my location. It think it would be great for beginning birders to use this app to familiarize themselves quickly with the great variety of birds commonly found on a regular basis in a location. However, its very simplicity makes it less desirable for more experienced birders who may be looking either to identify by group, color gradations, and sex, or to expand their knowledge with uncommon birds or those who may be migrating through at certain times. I find myself wishing I could add such as a category of bird, length of tail, or kind of beak, wing bars, eye rings, etc. to quickly add more specifics. I should think that there should be a way to quickly add to this app what a birder already knows, in order to make identification much smoother and quicker.

Best Use of my Time. When the world is boiling, I go outside and listen to my neighbors greet the day. I’ve lived next to this river for over 6 years so I’m familiar with certain songs and calls, but didn’t know who they belong to. Now I can record the sound in real time and start to identify who’s who in my bird world. And of course during migratory seasons, I can hear a new song and quickly identify the traveler. And the spectrograms (visual representation of the sound frequencies) offer another layer to get to know the birds’ songs. Play special attention to the triple decker Swainson’s Thrush song if you are ever blessed to hear them and you can SEE the complexity of their song. You have to click share and then export spectrogram to see this. Bonus points for this app working without service too! All my backpacking buddies were stunned that I was identifying our feathered friends past 5,000 feet.

Great for ID help for newbies, but struggles with tough IDs. This app is a great resource and I use it every time I go birding. The ID Info section does away with extraneous details and gives a succinct summary of field marks, which is great when trying to ID on the fly. The numerous pictures for every bird -usually in all plumages and from many angles - are also so helpful. However, I find myself usually just using the explore birds feature rather than the ID program because I find it more effective to manually narrow down my options. Because the criteria are so limited it often leaves out birds it should not or if you are incorrect about one detail this can throw off the whole search. It also only suggests common species in your area, which is frustrating because it is the uncommon birds I need help identifying. If you are just starting out birding or are birding in an unfamiliar area this app is a must have, but even moderately skilled birders can outperform the app’s ability to come up with potential ID answers.

One flaw. Great app. Really cool. Very helpful in identifying birds, but they don’t give all the options when you do “Start Bird Id.” For example, I saw a chukar on a mountain that is sort of in the middle of a city. They’re not super common there but they’re definitely there and so when I went through the identification process that wasn’t an option to choose from in the end. The only way to identify the bird in that specific location was to pick a location that I know where they are in abundance and then once I find it and click “This is my bird” then I change the location to where I actually saw it. This works fine in this instance because I’m familiar with the bird and it’s usual habitat but the next rare bird I find may not be listed and if I’m not familiar with it then I’ll never know what it was. My recommendation is to allow all birds in the pack that fit the descriptions show up on the list. Or at least make it a possible setting. If there is already a setting that can do that then someone please let me know. I know you can change that setting on the “Explore Birds” tab so why not make it a possibility on the “Start Bird Id” tab?

Best free birding app. This app got me started with birding. Last spring, I downloaded it to start identifying the common birds around me like American Robins, European Starlings, Common Grackles, and Northern Mockingbirds. Soon, I moved from merely identifying birds to counting them also, and soon after, I started recording full checklists with the EBird app (I think also a product of the Cornell School of Ornithology?), which is the best solution for those who wish this app would record their sightings. Now, less than a year later, I have 150 species on my list and have found a new lifelong hobby that I expect to bring me joy for decades to come. It’s all thanks to Merlin! Though I eventually found that a high quality illustrated field guide (I use Sibleys in the US and Collins in Europe) is more useful than any app, I still reference Merlin for sounds or any time I don’t have my guide on me. I was very excited when Merlin came out with bird packs for Europe right before I traveled to Greece this past fall, and I look forward to seeing more bird packs coming out for other parts of the world as time goes on. It’s fun to scroll through the foreign packs and dream about traveling to new places and seeing those birds. I’d glad that when I do go, I’ll have Merlin with me to help identify them!

Fun but frustrating. This app can be great fun, but frustrating at times. You will often see birds that the app won’t have listed. So, you are unable to include them in your counts. It’s very frustrating, and I’m at a loss as to why a bird will appear for a few days, disappear, re-appear, etc. Migration is an obvious factor, but some birds can be left in the list year round. Again, it’s frustrating. Another very frustrating issue is the functionality of the new app. It almost seems that they are pushing people to use the sound ID rather than the step-by-step option. This option is now extremely cumbersome. You can only identify one bird at a time, so if you spot 8 Cardinals (for instance) you can only report 1 sighting. To report all 8 you would need to do so 8 different times. Additionally, after you’ve identified one species, if you want to report another, the app forces you to get out of it and start all over again, or hit the back button continuously to get to the start. The older version of Merlin didn’t have this problem, which is very cumbersome, time consuming, frustrating and should be easily fixed.

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Amazing. This app is absolutely amazing such a wonderful source of information and I don’t understand how it’s completely free! I have just recently started bird photography and this app is a must have!!

Great potential. This app is on the right track for IDing birds but being in Australia it has a long way to go for a good repertoire of birds to ID with. The song ID is not so good at recognising birdsong and it’s not easy to search for a bird if the proposed IDs are not correct. However it’s the best app we have so far for identifying birds and I use it all the time.

Excellent resource!. I can’t believe that this is a free resource. I have paid for bird apps that are less polished and contain less information about birds than this app. Very grateful to the team who develops and maintains it!

Perfect for a novice birder. I’ve had this app for a couple of years now and I use it a lot! It’s helpful when I’m out walking in my local area and when I go further afield. I particularly like the region-specific bird packs which means, unlike my plant ID app, it’s relevant to my region and isn’t USA-centric. If I’m travelling can download a bird pack for that area. I’m one happy birder🦆

Brilliant App. A truly wonderful App, so helpful to the amateur Twitcher like myself..even better now we can Shazam bird calls for a positive ID.. Probably the nicest App I have on my IPhone.. Thanks folks, keep up the good work..

Amazing!. This app is very easy to use and it never has a problem identifying a bird. I even had one hidden behind a branch and it identified it correctly. Highly recommended. I love it and use it all the time.

Fave app. Wish you could use it offline.. I often go out camping or hiking where there is no reception. Shame you can’t ID and add birds while away from internet access 😟

Best free birdwatching. Incredibly helpful for amateur birdwatcher like me, I now know every bird I see where live and can identify them in other countries with this app.

Really Helpful 👍👍. This app is really amazing and easy to navigate. As someone who only recently got into birds, I find it cool to see what birds I can find near my house. I only wish that sound ID was a little more helpful, at least on Australian birds. I recorded a clear sound of a sulphur crested cockatoo (I already knew what it was) and it can up with no answers. One more thing- (I know I’m being annoying now) I wish that I could add a bird to my list already knowing what it is. This would make it easier to add birds. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Awesome app.. The app is great for ID-ing birds and saving their locations. The only issue is that if you don’t have the app with you when you see a bird, you can’t search for it in the explore section and save it to a location from there. You always have ti go through the ID steps, which sometimes can be difficult to find what you saw even if you knew what it was. If you could save birds from the explore pages it would get 5 stars from me.

Highly recommended!. Correctly found the species in less than half a minute!

Great app but would like more info. I love the app. Great with 3 ways of identifying bird. However, would be nice with more info of the birds. Size in cm, nesting type, etc. Would also be nice to flag that more results are available when a bird is ‘unreported’ in an area.

Great app! And only getting better. Highly recommend Merlin to anyone to use. There are several ways to find birds and there is lots of different pictures and sounds for most birds, making ID much easier than with a guidebook. We love using this app at home in Australia. The bird sound ID needs a bit of work (which I am sure it is getting- as the developers seem very good at working on and updating this app). We also discovered a bird pack for Sulawesi, Indonesia for our trip there which is fantastic! We were struggling to find a guidebook for this area and we’re very grateful that Merlin added a pack for it. They seem to add packs and updates quite often.

Does not work in Australia. Maybe it once did. Have tried this app for two weeks now. Nothing gets identified. Have loaded down the Australia packs. Nothing. My friend has also tried and nothing is identified. One can see the recording but zero identification.

Cannot fault this app. Brilliant. Changed the bird watching game. I love my physical bird guides but it’s great to have one always on me with the Merlin Bird ID app.

Very useful.. Have only had the app for a few days. Have used it several times already and it has been most accurate. Recommended.

A must have if it covers your area. This app is fantastic - with AI-driven bird identification from an uploaded image (even taking a photo of the camera or computer screen) and it is very accurate. There are 2 data packs for Australia, but only east coast so far. The explore component is the equivalent of your field guide, but provides real world images uploaded by other users - which I find are usually more useful than the typical illustrations as it more often shows the differences seen across times of year, maturity etc.

Absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I was recommended this app by another avid birdwatcher who I bumped into in the wild, it has been so helpful, so informative and above all EASY. Simply a must have for people who are curious about Birds, photography, or tracking. Keep it up 10/10

Fabbo app. This is the best bird app I’ve ever used! I love that it has heaps of info about the birds in my remote area of Australia, and that I can make a life list of spotted birds. I LOVE how accurately the app identifies birds from my photos!! I took one star off because sometimes I have to search around in the app to identify the bird I have seen. For example, we have (non-native) peafowl in our area, and the app won’t identify the bird using the usual search process. Peafowl are within the app, and I could add them to my life list, but only because I knew what they are called and could search alphabetically. However, I understand the app is being updated all the time, and I still have a way to go to learn all the app’s great features. I am super grateful that such a fabulous resource is available for free. Thank you Cornell Uni!!!

Valuable. Such a useful app. Narrowing the list of possible birds for your location & having excellent audio recordings to help identification, even when you can’t see the bird.

Fantastic app, but still needs some work. I love this app, but I still require the internet and the General bird search to find my bird. For example I just put in a black and white bird and it came up with a galah, sulphur crested cockatoo, Australian king parrot and a rainbow bee-eater among other black and white birds. My bird wasn’t listed and I accidentally ID’ed the wrong bird. I ended up finding with the help of google and their bird list, but I can’t see any way of retracting my bird nor can I ID it through a general search. It has a lot of potential, it’s helping to keep an eye on bird populations.m and it’s free so I give it 5 stars.

Best Bird identifier. This is the only bird identifier that can identify my cockatiel, Buddy. The others said he was a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo and one said he was a finch. The only downside is it takes up a lot of storage and it needs internet

Great App in parts. Works fine if it can identify your bird. If you know the bird but the app can’t find it then you have no way of adding it to your life list. Similarly if you add one by mistake you can’t remove it. Also crashes a lot when generating bird list

Fantastic for wannabe twitchers and experienced ones alike. This app is awesome. It has moved my twitching experience up several notches very rapidly. Great fun, and I love learning about birds

A fantastic bird ID App. We are keen travellers and photographers all around the world and love photographing nature. I have captured many bird images and this App allowed me to identify every single one. It brought additional enjoyment reliving moments of the different birds in the different countries. Thank you. I look forward to you improving the site with more details.

Photo IDs briliant!. Just got Merlin with its local (Australian) bird pack. The ‘bird ID’ wasn’t that helpful, but wow the Photo ID system is incredible. Returns accurate IDs from even badly taken photos. Very impressed.

Must use. Must use for birding! Simple but trustworthy app on every ID situation. I just wish there were more birdpacks for East asia.

From beginner to “I recognise that bird “. Love the app to identify birds and create a life list. Never knew I needed it but I do now. Lots of enjoyment and helps to create a better world for birds through citizen science.

Fantastic UK version. Poor Australian version.. My parents put me onto this app when visiting the UK recently. The sound ID was incredible and picked up many birds in short time. 5/5. On returning to Brisbane I installed the local bird data pack. It’s abysmal and cannot identify even the most common birds. 1/5.

Brilliant App. If I could give it 10 stars I wouldn’t hesitate in doing so. Being an admin of an Australian Native Bird group I often have to get an ID of a bird. Since I own no field guide books or anything I use Merlin with the Australian pack only to filter out similar species from overseas. I have had a 99.9% success rate finding out the positive ID with their calls & distribution also. I would say 100% success rate as it’s never been wrong but you never know it might be wrong once. Also being a free app they usually have limitations but I have found none that impact the information I need. Great work from The Cornell Lab in producing such an amazing & helpful app ..

Doesn’t work in Australia (VIC Metropolitan). It basically doesn’t work in Australia. I’ve taken it to areas filled with many many bird species and the only bird it’s been able to identify for me is the common myna which is invasive. I don’t think they should be offering maps of areas that are as incomplete as this this. It couldn’t even identify a magpie or currawong.

Jack wiseman. This app is amazing for identifying bird calls. It is so sensitive that it can Id distant Val’s and seperate multiple calls. I love it. Big thanks to the developers.

Excellent app. I love this app, it gives great information and it is exciting to be able to contribute to the knowledge base.

Ok. Too restrictive on location so that birds a little out of their range do not show up. A way of relaxing these criteria is needed. Also difficult to get a bird from the search list to an observation.

Great Australian content. Just downloaded and having a play with this app, now that the Australian content has arrived. Thanks so much. I love it already!

Amazing gets it correct!. Every bird I have identified yet has been correct. When you take a photo or do the test thing Five stars I totally recommend this!

Excellent even when offline. Don’t know how it happens but even when birding and offline, I can check a species in Merlin. Fantastic having my recording through eBird linked to species records though Merlin. Love it!

Very handy tool to help with the identification of birds and bird song.. Identifying Birds are not always easy you forget their names and their looks and also this their song ,having pictures and recordings of birdsong to refer back to is invaluable. In addition keeping a record and working with others for conservation is great. Thanks.

Excellent App. Australia. What an amazing app and it's free! I find myself going outdoors looking for birds so I can play with this app! It gives all the information I need with several photos of each bird with a detailed description, photo ID, sound ID, map and an extensive list of bird species to explore.

Excellent App. This app is reliable and accurate in quickly Identifying birds. It fills you with confidence. It has been a terrific asset to this newly interested birder.

Very helpful app. Chris in Australia. I have found this app to be very useful in identifying birds. My checklists are now more accurate. As well, it is quite accurate in identifying all but the rarer birds The rare bird identification issue will improve the more we use the app due to the artificial intelligence driving it. I just wish I could tell the app the correct species name after I have my bird identified by other means.

Calm. Great app that covers most Australian birds. Doesn’t have a good sound library for Australia. Highly recommend.

Best bird App. Ive had this a few months and its brilliant. I particularly like being able to put in a phone and get the match straight back. Highly recommended for amateur bird watchers.

Things I wish for. Mostly love it. But I want to be able to add birds from the explore section to the life list without struggling pointlessly through the ID. Black chinned honeyeater refuses to come up under any circumstances. So these limitations are a toleration.

Disappointed. I have several international bird apps on my iPhone/iPad and this one is disappointing It did not have several birds which we saw and identified by others means. We had apps for da and generally southern USA and northern Mexico. The ID from information and photos is a great idea but strangely useless.

Really good and easy to use. I’m no birder, I can spell ornithologist but can’t identify one in a lineup, however I’ve moved to a house that has made the bush and birds an integral part of my day. It’s been a bit a bit of a surprise. Cornell’s app is easy to use and scratches my itch to know ‘what bird is that?’ - and has multiple ways to get to that answer. I’m going to give it 5 stars because it does it’s primary function so well. But it misses a bonus trick I reckon. Even though I was pretty open to the next level and actually logging bird sightings… because it gives an internal (Internal to this app. Easy? Not as useful to others?) and an external (Different app. Clunky? But the ‘best’ and most useful to others?) options to do that, I’ve ended up doing neither, which is a shame. Nevertheless - A+ well done.

Absolutely brilliant. This app saves hours of going through field guides to Identify a bird. I can’t imagine life without it

Game changer for bird photography. I’ve been getting into bird photography the past three months and not always found it easy to identify what I’m photographing... until now. This app helps lots! My only gripe is that it doesn’t let me submit birds on my iPad (where my photos are downloaded to) - I can ID them there but not save to my list. Have worked around this by photographing the picture on my pad using my phone. Opportunity to improve things there but otherwise great. As others have said, would love a Shazam type option for bird calls as cannot always see the feathered friends but can often hear them.

Great App with some fixes. Great App in most sections. Just some inconsistencies to fix which I think is the intention of reporting when your bird isn’t found. E.g. The Start Bird ID doesn’t find a bird in my area e.g. brolga in Mt Isa. Photo Id found it. Explore birds doesn’t find any search results for Sarus Crane but it comes up under Photo Id. Thanks.

Best birding app!. This app is superior to the alternatives, many of which are expensive. Also the data is shared with a research organisation rather than a company.

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Je ne peux plus m’en passer. Partout où je vais dans le monde je télécharge la carte et voilà! Facile à utiliser et a identifier les espèces.

Fun but inaccurate. I wish there were an option to record sightings of birds without going through the whole ID process. I just saw a snow bunting - it’s unusual for this area, but not impossible. When I tried to go through the ID process to record it, nothing came up. I tried so many variations of size and colour and got no matching birds. I see it’s in the database, but there’s no option to click on the bird in the database and say “I saw this”. I even tried adjusting the location to one where I know this bird should be present and it still didn’t come up as a suggestion. This has also happened several times with other birds - I know what it is, but it doesn’t show up as an option when I go through the step by step ID. The photo ID option is cool if you can get a decent enough photo and the sound ID is very fun because I’m terrible at remembering bird calls.

Just starting to explore the app.. Great ID system. Just ID the great blue heron and listening to the sound provided I thought it was a poor choice. I am assuming that the bird recorded was in some kind of nesting area. 99% of the time when you see them and hear them is when they have been disturbed and take off in flight, squawking in annoyance. They sound like what I imagine a pterodactyl would sound like. Multiple recordings maybe? Listed from most common call to least.

Great app.. but. Have used Merlin for several years.. love it. Recently when I go into settings it freezes ( locks up) my phone. I have updated the app and my phone software. Still an issue.

Great App - Public Chat/Sightings log could be cool. Love this app. A cool upgrade would be a community section where the picture is shared and can add commentary!

Love this app❗️❣️. I love being able to identify birds anywhere. It’s a great resource ❣️

Thankful for the app. I’m thankful to have this app, but as mentioned in previous reviews it drains the battery SO FAST on my iPhone 14 pro. Also, I have many issues with the app taking a long time to identify a bird, I have missed many birds due to this reason. Overall a great concept but has a few bugs that need fixing.

Seriously awesome app. Love discovering new birds wherever I am. Very well made app with impressive recognition. THANK YOU CORNELL LAB!

Love this!. As an emergent bird lover, I am very much enjoying the ability to identity my backyard birds with their song. Along with my bird identification book, I am learning a lot about our feathered relations.

Excellent. Merlin is fabulous and helps me learn bird calls and songs so I know what’s around even if I can’t see them. It’s very accurate. If Merlin identifies a bird from sound and I see it then it’s always right.

Nice!. It’s really good for young birders! If you add a sound identifier, that would be awesome!

Great, but not prefect.. I use use app all the time. It’s a huge tool in my birding adventures. A word of caution, when using the sound Id take it with a grain of salt. Always follow it up with a visual confirmation. The sound id feature identified my son a a long eared owl 4 different times this season. So… yeah not perfect! But very handy when it is right.

Great but. Sound ID is a game changer but why the heck can we not add from the Explore section. Pleasepleaseplease change this

Great App. I would give this app 5 stars if Australia was included. I hope they add it soon

Informative and entertaining app that opens the world of birds with such ease!. I would highly recommend this app to anyone!

Amazing app. It’s is really amazing what this app can do! If you at all interested in birds, this is the app to have.

Amazing app!. Personally I love this app! The technology is amazing and I can now identify birds practically everywhere I go and get so much info on birds any time. I really enjoy bird watching and this app really helps and it's incredible how it picks up even the quietest of bird sounds from far away. Again, amazing app!

Can’t use the app:(. I really liked the app when first trying it but going on it a few days later, it said my 5 day grace period was over and to confirm my email but I’ve tried everything… they won’t send the email to confirm. I’m writing this review almost a year later and they still haven’t fixed this problem

Great app. I use this app so often, just a fantastic app

Awesome app!. Love this app so much. Love how it listens to bird calls and songs and then identifies which bird it is. So wonderful! Love using it while having a cup of coffee outside - put it on while listening to birds and then find out which birds you’re listening to!

Not good for travel. I have this app. I live in Eastern Canada. For the most part - works great! Sometimes it decides to not pick up the birds even tho they’re right there. But all-in-all, decent….for home. I recently travelled to Australia and was ecstatic to use this app there!!! I downloaded 2 different bird packages for the areas I was in and it picked up one common bird sound on my first day/try and then never worked again. I tried everything besides deleting and redownloading as I was too afraid to lose all of “My Birds” from home in Canada. (I even had my Aussie friend download the app and she tried and it never worked at all for her) Pretty disappointing…

Shazam for Birds!. Finally! The Shazam for birds I’ve been asking for! ❤️

Great tool. I love using this when I go for walks or am sitting on my balcony. It accurately identifies birds around me and highlights which bird is making which sound. It’s surprising how many species of birds are around us- I would never know some are there without the app. 10/10 would (and have) recommend this app for anyone interested in birds.

Grace period. Love the app but keep getting a message now when I open saying 5 day grace period over and that an email will be sent to continue but the email never sends and there is no contact information for support.

Amazing AI Technology. Very cool to take a photo and identify a bird. Then I can also listen to the bird calls to confirm it’s the bird I saw. If you are an avid border or just occasionally run into a bird you aren’t familiar with, use this app!

Great app! Really wish they had a widget!. I can’t count how many times I’m scrambling opening the Merlin app for sound ID when I hear a new bird. Would love a widget that takes me directly from the lockscreen to the sound ID of the app. PLEASE GUYS MAKE IT HAPPEN IT WOULD BE SO CONVENIENT

Merlin Bird. Love this app so much. Easy to use, full of pictures, sounds and information. Thanks

Love birds. I love to sit on my patio furniture and listen to the birds and record them they is so many to listens to in a day thank you for my relaxing place

Great for birdwatchers!. We are really enjoying this app, and it lets us know about birds that are in the area that we never would’ve thought! Being able to identify them, learning about them has been a joy.

Essential for birding. Amazing app essential for birding. The ID by sound we use all the time in the field to identify what we were looking at. The photo ID we use mainly at home. The ref section we use in both places.

Amazing travel companion. Fun at home to identify birds at the feeders but an amazing travel companion! Identify birds surrounding you (downloadable database, no connection needed on location) by sounds or photo or description, get a list of likely birds, build a life list and an album of sounds. Amazing! It was sometimes inaccurate in Costa Rica and a local guide told us it was difficult to propose changes in the database, so might not resolve in the near future.

Fun easy way to learn about birds. I love this app! I’ve learned so much in a short time a lot more than if I had to research the bird & so forth. I can now identify birds by there calls.

Love this app!. I love the multiple ways that you can identify a bird from sound picture or straight out of your silly memory.

Most innovative app in awhile!. Would be great if there was a way to sort by number of bird for the sound ID audio recordings, a way to filter recording by rarely of birds, a way to keep track of birds detected and associated records, a way to delete empty recordings.

Spectacular App. This app is so amazing its a must for any bird enthusiast. Did a Bird tour with an expert and this app did a better job of identifying birds than the expert. Totally recomended

Nice but occasional inaccuracies. Overall great app, recently updated my western Canada pack and now cannot ID a mute swan because western Canada isn’t even included on its map.

Amazing app. If you are interested in birds at all this app is perfect for you it runs smooth and can instantly tell you what species you are looking at either through picture or sound it’s awesome It defiantly helped kick start my life for birding

Nothing but issues. Worked well for a couple of months and now whenever I open it I get an email saying my five day grace period is over and I need to confirm via an email they’re sending me. Except it’s never received, no where, junk ir anywhere else. Added Cornell email to my contact list, no difference. Uninstalled and reinstalled, works for a couple of times, then we’re back to a five day grace period notification.

Superbe application. Application référée par Radio-Canada, facile d’utilisation. Elle réveille nos sens pour détecter de nombreux nouveaux oiseaux. Photos de qualité pour mieux identifier. Bravo et merci!

Great app! Learn a lot. This is great, does everything I wished for and identifying the birds I hear on my walks. I do wish it had a photo of a male and female birds because one photo is not enough , I am missing where to see that

I love the app but missing one feature. We love this app, we use it all the time at home and on our travels. The one feature that would make this a 5⭐️ app is to enable identifying and adding to my life list directly from the Explore tab. We often know the bird by name but are unable to find it using the step by step ID and it’s very time consuming.

Eastern Screech Owl. Sound Identification does not work for this owl in my area.

Lasqueti Island bc. I use this app every morning and throughout the day. They don’t have the northwest crow which we have along the BC coastal zones? Not sure how to inform the site that they have missed that bird. Looking forward to using Merlin again in Mexico this winter. So grateful and thankful 😉

Best app on my iPhone BUT. Lost a star due to excessive battery usage. The app is great, but it uses about 1% a minute while I’m running it. I need to force it shut and reopen it to use it again to conserve battery. I’m not exaggerating. It literally will go down 10% in 10 minutes. Can you please fix this? If I’m out on a nature walk, I can’t use it the entire time or I will drive my phone dead. Yes, I’ve rebooted. I’ve deleted my sound recordings. This seems to be a recent glitch.

Bird ID. An excellent source for identification both visual and sound. Thank you for your endeavour. Much appreciated Art

Works great. This is really impressive. Hear a bunch of birds? Hit the Sound ID Button and it listens and figures out what birds they are. Works with photos as well. Great app!

Great app!. One of the best apps to Id birds. It has helped me figure out so many new ones at my feeder. I am giving it one less star because it doesn’t save the birds you have seen. I want it to record a list of all of my birds

A Big help!!!. Getting used to this app but it is a great help in identifying birds!

So close to perfect. Honestly it’s an amazing app. I just wish it had basic info like size.

Best bird app!. Love the sound ID, maps, and photos. Thanks Cornell Lab❤️

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Hands down the best. If all the bird identification app I’ve tried this one is hands down the best. It has the largest library of bird songs, calls and flight sounds associated with birds. You can load different packs for regional birds or the complete pack for all birds for a much larger region. If you load the eBird app you can start sighting lists and submit your sightings and counts of birds. It uses GPS to keep a track of where you have gone during your outing and you can keep track of your sightings and compare with other sightings in your area or around the world. The only thing I wish they had is a bird song identifier where you could load a recording of bird songs and then identify them kinda like a Shazam or SoundHound type app. I recommend you download both apps and set up and account and start logging your sightings. It’s great fun and addictive.

One of the best apps ever. Does exactly what it's meant to do.. Easy to use and amazingly accurate! And that was before the latest update. I downloaded the app after seeing an interesting bird and was trying to identify it. I wasn't a birder, just interested in knowing the name of this pretty bird. It was so easy to use that I started to use it more often just for fun and now I'm an addict! I never knew there were so many fascinating birds in my own backyard. I have rarely been unable to id a bird. The photos are lovely and the recordings of their calls and songs make it possible to figure out what birds are around without having yet seen them. I am now a "birder". If you're even a bit curious about your surroundings, this will give you a whole new perspective and appreciation for the beauty and variety living right outside your window. I only wish they made one for plants and flowers!

Easy Start to birding. The app is very easy to use and user-friendly and most importantly, it doesn’t complicate things when just starting out the birdwatching experience. I have found using the voice recording/sound recording function is the most helpful tool in finding out the birds that surround me it makes getting answers, quick easy and fun. My only suggestion is that when you are identifying a bird by color type and size, I wish there was a way to just completely start over with one button because by the time you back up from each category, sometimes that bird has gone and flown away and it’s a missed opportunity. this app ignited a new passion of mine for watching birds and enjoy nature around me. It has help center myself and honestly it’s one of the best apps I have ever used!

Sooooo great!. This a perfect accompaniment to all of your bird watching events. I downloaded the pack of birds for the western united states, since I live there. You can ID birds with sound recordings, which lists the birds it hears and then highlights them every time it’s heard so you can pinpoint what your hearing. There re multiple clear pictures of every bird, which makes identifying super simple. You can also search the database by providing a few basic details to narrow down what you might be looking at. You can also take a picture from your phone and load it to identify using your own picture. I love, love, love that I can set up an account and keep track of my life list right there in the app. This has been so much fun to use, from my back yard to vacations, and I can’t wait to see or hear something new so I can open and use this wonderful app!

I use the sound feature most.. I have tried to do sound Id before by remembering the song and listening when I got home. But this app is amazingly helpful. There are limits though. If the bird is far away the app won’t pick it up. Occasionally I think it may mis-id a bird but if I’m in a new area where I don’t know all the bird songs I don’t really know. But it is loads of fun. Warblers, vireos and other small birds high in the trees that are hard to find in the leaves high up in the trees but are singing I can finally identify. There was a summer tanager that I heard one year in the spring but only saw once and didn’t get a photo. With this app I was finally able to positively ID the bird. Also flyover birds at night were a mystery until this app helped me ID them as Upland Sandpipers. I had heard them for years but never knew what they were.

I have more fun with this app. A friend introduced me to the Merlin app several years ago and my interest in birds has skyrocketed since then. When I take my dog out for a walk first thing in the morning, I turn on the Merlin app to see what kind of birds are around. In the springtime especially as birds migrate through my area, I’ve been amazed at “who” is around me. In May, there were 8 different kinds of warblers who had stopped in my yard while migrating through! All my friends with an interest in birds use the app too, and we share screen shots of what we heard. If one change could be made to the app, I wish that you could easily send the list of birds you hear. I don’t think that’s possible now or if it is, I haven’t figured it out (that’s why we send screen shots).

Incredible app. I love this app! I’m not really a bird watcher in any sense of the word but this app may encourage me to become one. My sister told me about it as she knew I loved sitting on my back deck enjoying watching & listening to birds. Now I am able to distinguish a few and love seeing the variety that inhabit the area I live in. I’ve read recently that bird song is good for our mental health and even has a lasting good affect on it. Something I had in a way instinctively known for my own good mental health. But now I’m completely sold on it and I encourage everyone I know to download Merlin and enjoy listening and spotting different bird species and learning more. I’ve only had this app for two weeks but can’t wait to share it with my grandchildren. Thank you Cornell for making this available to a backyard bird enthusiast like me.

My new favorite app. This has quickly become one of my favorite apps I have on my phone. I work at a wildlife rehab and I was not a huge birder until I started working with them more. Consequently, I was not too knowledgeable on bird IDing but due to the nature of my work I needed to learn fast. Thanks to the Merlin app, I’m able to quickly find out what kind of bird I’m looking at. It’s like a super easy dichotomous key, answer a few questions and you get a list of birds that fit the description complete with maps and sounds. I think Merlin has been correct with the first suggestion about 99% of the times I’ve used it, and the 1% of times is probably rare birds at work that were found somewhere they shouldn’t be. If you are interested in learning more about birds I absolutely recommend the Merlin app as well as the All About Birds website/Cornell lab of ornithology ebird website 🕊🦩🦢🦃🦜🦚

Accurate Photo ID. Back in March I found a small flock of Dunlins. Beings I had never seen them before I didn’t know what it was but I did take some pictures, although they were dark and blurry. Merlin Photo ID said they were Dunlins. So I put it on eBird as Dunlins and of course it was flagged as rare. It didn’t take long until I had an email from my reviewer say that they are Pectoral Sandpipers. He said to note the short bill. Hmm! I wasn’t seeing a short bill! Apparently he only took a hasty look at the pictures. The next day an experienced birder went to look at them and confirmed them as Dunlins. Man! Was I ever impressed with Photo ID! Before I was kind of mad at it since it said Dunlins and not Pectoral Sandpipers. The reason I knocked off a star is because I wish the app would say how big the birds are in inches. Sometimes it say “slightly smaller than so and so bird”. Well, suppose I never saw that bird and don’t know how big it is?!

I love this app!. Being a fairly new bird watcher, just over a year in, this app is so helpful to me. It’s easier than scouring the pages of my giant book when I’m not even sure of the family of a particular bird I’ve sighted, the photo ID is wonderful even when my picture isn’t the best. Until I have better equipment for photo taking the few misses are to be expected. The sound ID is wonderful since often times I have multiple birds and am not sure which is making which sound so this helps me to know which bird I’m hearing and put sight and sound together. It even caught the sound of a bird I hadn’t yet seen and once I did and got a photo, I was able to connect them. It keeps account of all the birds I’ve seen, when and where, and I use it every single day everywhere I go. I’d give it 10 stars if it were an option!

Solid app, could use a bit more granularity. I have been using this app for several years now—as a casual observer not a serious birder—first in my back yard in the U.S. and then for the past year across Costa Rica. I LOVE that it supports more than the U.S., something the other apps do not. It doesn’t always find the bird I’ve seen, so I don’t depend on it exclusively (have a bird book for Costa Rica). The photos and sounds and maps are a huge plus. It would be AWESOME if a user could search by call—number of notes, type of sound (flutter, whistle, squawk, etc.), and the like. Two drawbacks in the Bird ID feature: 1. Color selection is more limited than the colors I’ve seen in birds here in the tropics, which makes it harder to find the right bird; 2. In addition to the current filters it would be helpful to filter also by shape of wing or beak or tail, or by primary and secondary colors (e.g., the masked tityra is primarily white and black with red around the face as a secondary color).

who knew?. I read about this app in the NYT “what to do this weekend” newsletter. The description sounded magical. I tried it and I am thoroughly charmed! As in the article, I go out on my porch, turn on the “sound ID” and see all the amazing birds within earshot! In the morning over coffee and in the evening with a good glass of wine - I am not yet bored - in fact, I look forward to my new porch time pass time! I have learned to recognize sounds i would not have attributed to birds, which I now know as Anna’s Hummingbird and Rufous Hummingbird, as well as a supporting cast of familiar but heretofore unknown mockingbirds, finches, parrots (apparently escaped from a breeder years ago) and even a european starling (? - I live in southern california, so maybe not...). I highly recommend this app if only to increase your awareness of who you are living among - but even more satisfying is to get to know your feathered neighbors just a little better.

This newbie loves it.. Love this app. Recently retired, I now have time to take walks and observe my natural surroundings, a pleasure I lacked time to do for decades. In my suburban area I started hearing symphonies, courtesy of our feathered friends, but actually saw only a small percentage of these avian musicians. Who is making all this sound? I can almost always get a correct answer now, even if there’s some noise from car, truck, or plane traffic. When I’m lucky enough to get a photo of one of these folks sitting still for a moment, I can almost always count on identifying that way too. I never was a real birdwatcher, but I’m headed in that direction now. True, the app isn’t perfect and maybe never can be - I have a local mockingbird that I suspect is fooling it sometimes, and once in a while it just can’t identify what it’s hearing - but this has brought a lot of joy to me, and maybe a new hobby.

Seems infallible in Virginia!. This is about the most interesting application I have downloaded in years, and so far it hasn’t asked me for money! That by itself is quite refreshing—the older one gets, the less one seems to have of disposable income. There are a lot of birds out here—many of them are tiny, but at least they have good lungs and what seems to me an infinite variety of songs to sing. As it was when I first began snorkeling, I feel that a new door has been opened for me in this world I have been living in for so many years. I am very grateful for the opportunity. Somehow it seems to give one an intimacy with the wild birds to be able to know which of them is producing such beautiful sounds: not just a name, but a photograph as well! And as a lifelong photographer, I am very happy the photo ID is included as well—I have always tried scrupulously to identify the birds I have posted for others online, but searches that sometimes used to take days now can be done very nearly instantaneously—and perhaps even more nearly correctly! This is one application that I certainly recommend—for people of all ages. At the very least it gives you a good excuse to sit quietly and focus on all the life around you for a while—and in these times, that can’t be bad!

4.5 Stars. I gave this app a 4 out of 5 but it deserves a 4.5. I use it all the time. Sometimes to identify birds but mostly to help track migrations and seasonal birds. Therein lies my minus .5 deduction. The app often does not show you "rare" or "uncommon" birds in your area to log. Whether an Indigo Bunting in July in Texas or a Muscovy Duck with photo id, Merlin won't let me record the bird! It is infuriating especially when I know what type of bird it is, and too often have to report no matches. This odd control of what birds you can log never happened before. Otherwise, the app is delightful with images and sounds to help novice or veteran birders. My middle school daughter has loved using it for years. It's the only app she can use. It is very educational. Sometimes your life list of birds recorded resets after updates but who doesn't like to celebrate seeing beautiful birds.

Best way to learn. I have learned more about birds in the last five days using this app than I have in the last 50 years. Let me say that I am definitely a beginner, and if you want the opinion of expert look elsewhere. I would not say I’m even a birder, but I love learning about the natural world, and learning who my neighbors are. I have tried going the other way, learning what birds should be around, learning what they should look like and sound like, and then going looking for them, with very slow success. With this app, I can listen for the bird and then it tells me what bird is there, now I can recognize their calls, and I have been able to find them more easily than ever before (some of them). I’m going to be contributing now to the Cornell lab, in addition to Audubon society. Thank you for developing this.

Spring yard birds. Renewed my excitement about birds around home. Quickest way to associate sounds with spots as well as what is present but unseen over many years, really helps sort out species when many singing. Really confusing initially to load. Tried adding to already loaded Merlin, didn’t work, on iPad, tried directions I found by sending request for help to Cornell, I couldn’t follow. I was confused that I was asking for help to add to eBird!I Telling you all this FYI as 75 yo. am poor with computer so days passed before friend just loaded easily on . Folks like me need more simplified steps. Overall really delighted with it and encouraged in big way for knowing what IS there. Have learned at least 8 birds in just a few days I prior didn’t know I had!!! Muchas gracias, mahalo nui loa, thank you. I love what Cornell is doing for birds

An outstanding resource. I’ll start with the most important part: This is a free app without adds! In an era where most seem to think it’s not worth it to create something if there isn’t a profit motive, thankfully Merlin Bird exists. I haven’t been able to find a free bug finder app that isn’t crippled by ads, so I am grateful to have one for birds. A tiny downside is that on rare occasion the search doesn’t bring up any birds that match what I’m looking at, and even if I find the answer by looking it up elsewhere, there doesn’t seem to be any way to enter a bird that is not listed. But the app is so helpful 99% of the time - and again, it’s FREE - that I can’t bring myself to score it any less than 5* just because it isn’t absolutely flawless. I encourage everyone to download this app, then go outside and observe the beauty of nature.

New sense of place. Get this app, it will change your experience with all that is around you. I am addicted to Merlin. As a non birder and non presence of mind to think about where I am in the world, it is amazing to have what I take for granted to be given an identity. I used Merlin to better understand my surroundings when I moved. It made the forests richer and gave me an appreciation of place. Now I use when there is an unfamiliar sound. Forest birds are quick, but at least I know what to look for to identify them. It would be nice if they would let you know a bit more about the bird calls, since I fear that when I play some it is a warning and I don’t want to create unnecessary fear. The only notable failure was when my cat meowed and Merlin identified it as a loon, but I think the app was valid in that identification too. Huge thanks to those who made Merlin

Absolutely Incredible. I love this app with my whole heart & soul! Having free access to this app inspired my love of birdwatching & connecting with nature. It is incredibly accurate & user friendly. Another thing i’ve loved is being able to download different packs for different regions. When I travelled to Hawaii all i had to do was download the Hawaiian Islands pack & it was able to identify the bird species I encountered. I can’t talk highly enough about this app! I recommend it to everyone interested in birding or wanting to learn more about bird species. The only thing I would adjust (which isn’t much because i’m so satisfied with the functioning of the app already) is being able to manually add birds to the life list without having to capture sound or a photo of it. Regardless, an amazing app and I have no complaints!

Favorite app missing 1 thing!. I love this app and use it almost daily. It makes my hobby of feeding and watching my local birds more fun, and it really helps me know what to look for and identify new birds, while I’m on vacation in a different part of the world. I just have 1 wish to an already feature rich app. In the species info, it would be nice to see a silhouette image along with an object for reference, such as silhouettes of other well known birds to see how the size matches up. This could be similar to the ID tool where a rough size is selected. That same graph could be used with the size range of that bird highlighted and be placed below the already offered description. I know a lot of bird ID books will provide a silhouette of the bird in comparison to the size of the book. This is helpful in identification, especially when species can look similar, except for size, like the Cooper’s Hawk and the Sharp Shinned Hawk. Or the Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers.

This app is a game-changer!. Although I love going out birding with two relatives and enjoy taking pictures of the birds I see, I am not a very knowledgeable birder. I’ve an enthusiastic amateur! 😄 Merlin ID though has taken my birding to a new level. I LOVE the Sound ID feature and am amazed at the birds it finds! One day it heard a Great-crested Flycatcher. I could tell which tree it was in but was not able to spot it. My sister had gotten a photo of it a few days before. I’ll keep trying! I love that particular park even more now that I’m finding out all the birds that are there! I do wonder though about the Pileated Woodpecker Merlin identified for my sister-in-law even though she couldn’t hear it. Lol. We’ve seen one there a couple times anyway, but I’ve never not heard that bird! So I am suspect on that ID. Merlin sure makes birding more fun when we know what we’re looking for!

The sound ID is so helpful! I love it!. When I sit in my yard, I hear so many birds but can’t usually see them singing because they are in bushes and trees. I generally know what birds are in my area, I’ve watched them for years and had feeders and my Petersen guide. But which one is singing? With the Sound ID, now I know! Sometimes it says a bird that I think is likely to be wrong but mostly it seems very reliable. And I like how it kind of highlights that bird if it sings again while I’m recording. If I’m lucky and very still, I can see them singing - now I can be sure it is a Carolina wren nesting outside my kitchen window and not just a random sparrow. I haven’t been able to use the photo ID; any pictures I take are too blurry. Maybe if I upgrade my phone and get a better camera.

Colorado birder. Great bird ID tool! I didn't have a bird book with me on a recent trip to a Florida state park and do not know wintering shorebirds. I took a photo with my phone and then downloaded the app at the hotel that night. Figured out quickly what I saw that day including several new species for me like a black-bellied plover. I use this app frequently. It not only makes bird identification really easy, but I like being able to contribute to Cornell's data base on what birds are where. Update to my review: I have been using Merlin now for several years and love it. There are times though when I observe a bird that will not come up in the search results. It is not a case where Merlin does not have the species in its data base because I see it elsewhere in the app functions. It would be great if the app allowed you to name the bird yourself if it doesn’t come up in the search. That way, your siting could be recorded.

Great for IDing, but Life List needs work. This app is fantastic for identifying birds and I love how you can listen to the bird songs. However, the Lift List feature needs work. I love cataloguing the birds I see, but I wish you could add birds without having to use the Bird ID feature. If I see a turkey on a road trip, I have to say what size and color bird I saw and then select it from a list instead of just being able to search “turkey”. This can also be frustrating when the bird you saw doesn’t even show up as one of the suggestions. I saw a Bullock’s Oriole, and it was on the “Likely birds for today” page, but no matter what I put in to the bird ID options it did not show up. This has happened with several birds and I have been unable to catalogue them. So while this app is great for identifying birds, if you want to keep track of the one’s you’ve seen it’s probably better to keep a list somewhere else.

Fun and interesting. I was curious about the bird songs I hear in my backyard so I downloaded this app. The sound ID feature is really cool! I’ve identified 19 species of birds in my area. I like the list feature because it keeps track of the birds I’ve seen/heard. This app has increased my interest in birds. While I don’t plan to take bird watching up as a hobby, I am finding a lot of enjoyment with the app. Two suggestions: It would be nice to have the option to automatically add the identified birds to my list, instead of confirming each one in sound ID. I update each new species but I don’t bother adding ones I’ve seen before. The second suggestion is to add the ability to crop sound recordings for those really long ones that I only want 10-15 seconds from. Really enjoying this app. Kudos to the developers!

Great concept - very approach - some flaws. I love the idea of this app. I have loved birds all my life and this is a great way to identify and log birds you see and even hear. The Sound ID is very impressive and for me works better than the main Start Bird ID feature used for visual identification. For the visual identification as an alternative to the option of going thru the size/colors/etc questions I would like the ability to use the explore birds to directly find a bird if I know what it is or at least have a good idea of the type of bird it is. Sometimes with the questions you don’t get the actual bird it is from the options given. The second issue is the app crashes too much, either when using the sound ID and doing recording of when you go back in later to tie and document the recorded sound to the right bird. Last night it crashed and I lost all recording for the last year.

Being in the world. I listen to birds outside my window, and am with them when I know which birds are chirping, building nests, laying eggs, raising the next generation. I’m connecting their songs with seeing them in the trees, shrubs, and flying. Last year there were more than 40 bird species in my backyard. Additionally, my father was a veterinarian - avian epidemiologist at the USDA, and a lecturer at Cornell Veterinary School. He died many years ago. Through Merlin, I feel connected to my father and his work, across time and landscapes. A friend 3k miles away introduced me to Merlin. I have introduced several people to it. One woman I know now uses Merlin to connect with her grandchildren. They listen to and watch birds together, then read about them online. There is hope in the world when children learn to love and care for the planet. Merlin demonstrates some of the best we can do with technology.

Best bird id tool I’ve ever seen. Easy to use. It narrows the list of possibilities down based on the date and your location so you only consider birds that you might actually see. You can easily search the list if you think you know what the bird you’re seeing is, or if you haven’t a clue, you can use the simple q&a method. That works for complete beginners. I have recommended Merlin to several beginners and all have found it great. And the recent addition of identification of bird songs and calls is a big step forward. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s impressively good and I know that Cornell will keep working on it and improving it. I have tried several birding apps, but no more. Merlin is the one I will stay with. I no longer bother to carry a bird book in the field. I also like the easy cross reference to Merlin from EBird.

Great app! Highly recommended!. This app has got me into bird watching more then ever! Not only is great to ID birds with, but to call them in as well. It is so cool to be listening to a cardinal call on the app then all of the sudden have that bird fly into your yard and talk back to you! Such a great experience. I’ve even had Grey Cat Birds fly and land right next to me, 2 feet away, and talk to me. I’ve listen to the calls so many times now that I can ID a bird without even pulling up the app just by the sound they make! This app has also taught me many things about many different kinds of birds. This has helped me improve my feeder station to attract those kinds of birds. Before I would get maybe 20 birds a day. Now I get over 100! I highly recommend this app for someone looking to learn and ID birds more easily. I’ve been loving so far, and I don’t plan on deleting anytime soon!

Incredible app!!!. First off, i have never reviewed an app before! Secondly, I am completely obsessed with this app! I live in the suburbs but in an area abundant with wildlife. I am brand new to bird watching and honestly I love the app more for the sound id. It identifies multiple birds in the area and it is so fun identifying the bird with the call. I had no idea the types of birds that were in my area. Now I can recognize most of my backyard bird calls and when I hear certain birds, I go outside to see them. I’m traveling to the UK soon and I cannot wait to see what birds are there! The app is user friendly and offers so many options. You can save your recordings of birds which is so nice. There are samplings of different calls and photos of juvenile and adult males/females. It has turned me onto a whole new hobby! Thank you!!!

It’s Magic. This Is a perfectly marvelous app. I live in a wooded area where birds are often singing but usually not visible and of course they all sing at the same time. I love to sit with Merlin listening and identifying the voices all around me. It’s like wearing scuba goggles underwater because it opens up this whole world you otherwise couldn’t see. A couple suggestions: 1) it would be great to have a just listen mode instead of always recording. Still ID the birds but not save the recording. 2) In the bird descriptions, add some typical dimensions. I know you choose the relative size as the first step but helpful to add in the bio. 3) interesting to have some measure of the quality of the identification. For example based on song, 75% probability it’s a scarlet tanager. I think it might be there with the best match indicator but not clear. Thanks for creating one of the best apps out there.

Talk to the birds. I have sat on my deck and called numerous birds, some of whom have flown within a couple feet of me, perched and sung back! A pair of juncos nested in my hanging planter and allowed me to watch the progress of nesting, laying and finally, showing their young ones how to fly. They would sing back to certain calls and I believe one actually was attracted to me and would visit and sing every time I appeared outside. Not danger calls or clickings, but actually perching a few feet above and singing love songs, showing me his tail feathers and flying back and forth within a foot or two! Amazing way to communicate with the birds! Owls especially respond at night. Calling back with multiplying interest. Anna’s hummingbirds will spend up to 3 minutes flying 2 ft in front of my face just looking at me, trying to figure out who I am. I LOVE this app!

♥️Song ID feature. I LOVE this app❣️I have had CDs with birdsongs before but I’d listen and then there’d be too many in my mind to decipher who was who. I always have my phone on me and with this app if I hear a bird I want to identify I just pull it out and start recording and voila there the bird song/call is identified. I love that as it records, if other birds chime in, the app will identify them too…and with each new one the birds name comes up in a list so you don’t get confused. I love this feature as it’s like a pop quiz—I’m trying to learn the main one and I say the names of the others before they pop up in the list. Another feature I like is that once you and the app have identified a bird then there is a list of recordings to verify the song was the right one….and you learn any other call/song they might have. So fun-am learning so much❣️

Merlin in Arizona. We have used Merlin extensively in Arizona from the southern border to the Kaibab plateau. The sound identification is very useful given it’s panoramic detection capabilities. With this as a guide and a good pair of binoculars I have been able to identify many more birds. The explore features are excellent for regional information and sounds as well as the extensive bird catalogs. A truly wonderful application. It would be nice to be able to upload audio and photo recordings that capture the GPS location and time & date data. This might be useful for migration and species studies. My only complaint is the need to have an internet connection to make a sighting report. I have had numerous sightings I could not report. Many times I do not have internet on the trails or deep in the canyons. I would recommend having the option to use the cellular network as well or allowing reports to be stored for later uploading.

Updates ruin the app. I love this bird identifying app. I use it for its purpose always. I am very disappointed about the updates, however. I use the Russian Language. When I use Family/Most Likely in the Explore Birds section, it used the families. I used to be able to view families. Now, the list I see is identical to Most Likely, in which the birds are not very organized. And when I try to view by family, I just see a blank screen with blank spaces for birds that are intended to be there. Please return this. The developers should also add full language support for the app. Now that I use Russian in Merlin, and the new update only allows Most Likely in other languages, the birds become a jumbled mess! I am also really disappointed that the description of the birds are English in every case, even if you change the language. Maps are frustrating: most birds do not have a map, or have a map that is extremely difficult to read (see European Goldfinch maps). The map legend does not show meanings for all colors and patterns (see Sandhill Crane maps). Please add Russia bird packs. Russia is a vast country, and there are many birds in it, too. Some birds in Russia are also not available in any bird pack! Finally, please return old and advanced eBird-like settings. It might be complex, but just add an Advanced Settings button below it. This would be much better compared to just Language settings.

You won’t go wrong with this app!. My family has used this app extensively as we camp, hike, and simply walk the neighborhood! It gives a quick assessment of possible birds we see after a handful of simple questions. We downloaded the SE Australia bird pack on a pre-COVID trip there, and had great fun identifying and appreciating a bevy of exciting (new to us) species. Also the US and Canada bird pack guided us through a road trip and back country journeys there. We have sent photos in for additional help when the app was inconclusive, and received prompt, accurate answers! Plus the bird songs and calls are there. Awesome for beginners and experienced birders alike. Kudos to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Wish we had figured out how to track life lists with eBird via a link to the Merlin App long ago. If birding is on your radar, you’ll love this app. (We impress our friends with our quick IDs too!)

Best app on my phone?. Since Sound ID I love this app a lot, use it every day and now always looking forward to my next time to get out. My girlfriend has gotten into it without me forcing it on her, just because it’s fun. When i catch up with people i tell them about this magical “like Shazam for birds” app that occupies my time. Only reason for 4 star and will change to deserved 5 star once fixed is because there is a bug i have witnessed on more than one device where it prevents being able to download US and Canada continental bird pack (says needs 2.93 gb on devices with plenty 10+gb of free space). Also my girlfriends app all of the bird images in the explore birds app got whited out one day and when you clicked on them it to view bird details took her to bird packs, then app would not let her uninstall our area’s corrupted bird pack. She then had to delete/reinstall app losing all of her sound recordings.

Only a few tweaks. This app is amazing! I love the multiple ways to ID a bird and how quick and easy it is to do the quiz and find your bird. For the most part, I have always managed to ID the bird I’ve seen, however there are a few tweaks I would like to ask for. During the bird ID quiz, add in a question about what time you’ve seen the bird, like dawn/morning/afternoon/dusk/evening, since no matter how many times I corrected my answers looking for a Great Horned Owl, I couldn’t get it to pop up. On that same note, since the birds I want are often in the list of birds in an area, maybe add a way to say “I saw this bird” off the bird list instead. Otherwise this app is amazing, I use it every time I see a new bird, and it gives me such good info to use when talking about the birds to people. I always recommend this app, so I’d love to see it grow. Thank you!!!!

Nice accuracy tested with familiar birds. I rarely use the description feature as I count on the detail picked up with my camera. I use a telephoto frequently and then magnify the photo after download to my computer and then do a screen shot from my iPhone. This process allows me to look at each feature as I read through suggested birds and I learn with each shot. On the road when I don’t have my laptop I do the same iPhone photo from the screen on my camera. The photo is not as good but it allows me to ID as I go. The audio has been excellent. I love to be able to record and identify as I sit away from ambient noise. The photos are a true bonus as my grandson loves to see the birds he hears! I tested this application at home in my woods where I have 16-20 species through the year.

Merlin; A great app to help id birds. I like using Merlin to ID birds while I’m out and about. I use multiple approaches depending on circumstances. The relatively new sound id works very well when there are sustained call, but not as well if the bird(s) are doing short duration chirps. For photo IDs, I often take a screenshot off my Nikon camera’s screen with cell phone while using app. That works well for the most part, and also depends on quality of photo. I love that it is linked with eBird and the feature for life list. As I have used the apps only for the last three years, I am adding new birds to me as well as birds that I’ve seen prior to app use as I see them again. It’s a great way for keeping track of the life list and with photos of the birds, reminds me what the birds I don’t typically see look like for reference.

Love this ap. This is my all-time favorite app! I live in the foothills in North Carolina, and love to listen to and photograph birds. I have used the app for years to help identify what I’ve seen, but when the sound and picture ID features were added, for me, it went from being a really good app to my absolute favorite app. I can listen with the app, and know what’s in the area - especially helpful since I’ve only been here two years. Then I know what to look for. If I take a picture of something I don’t know, when I upload photos, I can use Merlin to find out what new treasure I’ve uncovered. Is it perfect? No! But so many times when I was skeptical, I actually eventually found the bird - and that Merlin had been correct. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about who’s singing around you.

Favorite App. This app allows me to learn so much about not only what birds are visiting my feeders, but what birds are in my trees! I listen to the calls and songs and after a little time begin to recognize them when I can’t see them....but I know they’re near....Sometimes if I play them, they answer back!! Makes me feel a bit like Dr Dolittle😉❣️ I even downloaded the Northern Europe Pack and used a photo that my daughter while studying in Holland to identify a couple of birds that she snapped pictures of on her run!! I played the song of another and she has been hearing that one when she takes walks!! Thank you for providing such a cool app with so many opportunities to use it in so many ways!!! Cornell is awesome ....and No- I am not related to Ed Marinaro who was one of the all time great Cornell running backs!!😉👍🏻

Merlin. Another triumph from Cornell! I still depend on field guides primarily and I am usually without internet service so I have not used the app enoughto give any particular comments. I can say that I have been using the new sound ID feature. It is true that our ears are the best way to “watch” birds in the field so having all of the audio features, particularly the audio grams, has added a great deal to my bird “watching” on all levels. I am still acclimating to what I think is a delay between the audio gram as it is displayed and what I actually hear. But so what — that is probably just my perception; I need to use it more. Thank you so much for this enhancement. And thank you for not making this a subscription thing. I just hope you get enough $$$ coming in to support everything that you do.

Great Introduction to Birding!. This app got me into birding in 2020, and I recommend it to my friends whenever they express curiosity about birds. It is just as easy to use whether you are someone who just whips it out when you hear a weird bird song or whether (like me) you actively peruse your local bird species (instead of scrolling instagram). It won’t handle everything that you see, since birds are unpredictable, but it helps you start identifying birds by sight and sound. One big suggestion for the development team (since it seems like you really do keep making this app better and better!): one, it would be nice if we could run Sound ID while also looking at the Explore tab… I’m typically listening to the bird while also trying to look at the plumage on the app.

Needs photos in description info. I absolutely LOVE Merlin. I use all functions every day, multiple times daily. I enjoy seeing the seasonal changes in our local birds, particularly living very close to a large protected area along the James River. My one complaint, which I view as very significant, is that there are no pictures of the birds once you seek out details/information. You get a thumbnail of the bird within a list but as soon as you click on it you only have the Merlin logo bird where it sure seems that pictures of the bird should be in order to further your knowledge and help in identification. It’s so frustrating to have to switch over to Google in order to actually SEE the bird that you are identifying/researching. Please, please, PLEASE fix this issue! It doesn’t make any sense as to why pictures are not attached to each bird’s profile. Thank you! Kim

Great for Backyard Birding. This is a great app for identifying birds through there calls, photos or just browsing by the filters. It has great pictures and sound samples and is pretty good quality overall and I’ve learned a lot using this app. Their is one major downside which might be unavoidable given it’s database; you can’t use it without an internet connection. This is pretty frustrating as most of the time when I go out birding or hiking on national parks there is little to no internet connectivity and not being able to use the app when it is most relevant is frustrating. If you take pictures or recordings or have a good memory you can identify the birds after the fact but that adds unnecessary hassle. If you want to identify birds in the city or your backyard however then this is a great find and of course it’s free.

It’s like Pokémon Go for birds. The sound ID is honestly so entertaining. As it listens to the birds around you it identifies them and keeps a list while you record and when that bird sings it gets highlighted so you can tell what one’s singing! After your done you can save them to a collection too which has made me go different places to find new birds like Pokémon go used to make other get out and find new ones!! Depending on your area you download a bird pack so it identifies the best matches to the songs. Found out about this app and was also surprised to find it comes from a school in my own state which makes me proud! I also believe that identifying and reporting sightings of the birds adds more data for their research. A great way to spend time , get out of the house and help science!

Open this daily!. I was raised watching and identifying birds in Interior Alaska, but now living in south central AK, there are several breeds we never had up north. This app is so fun, from the colors to the Sound ID function, I really enjoy this app!! So far this summer I’ve already heard and spotted 2 new species that I didn’t even know we had! I love to sit in the evenings and play different songs and calls from the app and see who shows up. Some will swoop in really close To examine and it’s just fun to see which calls attract other species as well as more of the one I’m using- it’s especially fascinating listening to the subtle dialects (for lack of a better word) from a recording on the east coast Vs what our Alaskan birds of the same species sound like. Well done Cornell, and thank you!! 👏👏👏

Versatile and accurate. Using Merlin Bird ID has made me a better birder. It’s so common to hear birds I can not see so Merlin’s sound ID has become my go-to birding tool. I often hear one or two birds whilst Merlin “hears” several more. This allows me to go back in my recording and listen to the bird identified by Merlin, so I can rehearse and learn a new song or call. I’ve only noted shortcomings when traveling in other parts of the world. Merlin sometimes seems to search the wrong regional package and either tells me it doesn’t have data for my area or that the bird (even a common one!) isn’t in the database. The data set and utility has evolved in meaningful ways during my years using Merlin. I’m delight that the crowd-sourcing it enables, in conjunction with e-Bird, is enriching our understanding of the lives of birds.

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Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab 3.0.5 Tips, Tricks, Cheats and Rules

What do you think of the Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab app? Can you share your complaints, experiences, or thoughts about the application with Cornell University and other users?

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Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab 3.0.5 Apps Screenshots & Images

Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab iphone, ipad, apple watch and apple tv screenshot images, pictures.

Language English
Price Free
Adult Rating 4+ years and older
Current Version 3.0.5
Play Store edu.cornell.birds.merlin
Compatibility iOS 16.0 or later

Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab (Versiyon 3.0.5) Install & Download

The application Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab was published in the category Reference on 11 December 2013, Wednesday and was developed by Cornell University [Developer ID: 382072985]. This program file size is 105.75 MB. This app has been rated by 78,183 users and has a rating of 4.8 out of 5. Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab - Reference app posted on 01 February 2024, Thursday current version is 3.0.5 and works well on iOS 16.0 and higher versions. Google Play ID: edu.cornell.birds.merlin. Languages supported by the app:

AF AR DA EN FR DE HE ID JA KO ML MR PT RU ZH ES TH ZH TR Download & Install Now!
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Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab App Customer Service, Editor Notes:

Two minor bug fixes: - Bluetooth access will now only be requested when enabling Swarovski devices - Bird names are now available in Simplified Chinese again We periodically release fixes and tweaks to improve Merlin Bird ID and help you identify more birds. Your feedback and support drive our ongoing efforts to create a better birding experience for everyone. Stay tuned for more updates, improvements, and exciting features!

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Arcadia - Watch Retro Games 18 December 2019

Each capsule is packed with pure, high-potency nootropic nutrients. No pointless additives. Just 100% natural brainpower. Third-party tested and validated by the Clean Label Project.