Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

About this 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.
• Discover a new bird species each day with your own personalized Bird of the Day
• Get customized lists of birds you can find where you live or travel - anywhere in the world!
• Keep track of your sightings—build your personal list of the birds you find

MACHINE LEARNING MAGIC
• Powered by Visipedia, Merlin Sound ID and Photo ID uses machine 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.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s mission is to interpret and conserve the Earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds and nature. We are able to offer Merlin for free thanks to the generosity of Cornell Lab members, supporters, and citizen-science contributors.

Ratings and reviews

Had this app on my old phone and it worked great. But I upgraded to a new Pixel 9 Pro and now the app is a brick: it doesn't work without bird packs, and bird packs fail to download every time. They get to about 25% progress bar and the just silently quit. I have good Internet and plenty of storage space; this is a problem with the Merlin app or their servers.

I like the new interface. A lot of improvements. However, I can no longer swipe a bird on my LifeList to see relevant checklists. Thankfully, I figured out how to do this in the eBird app, though not as convenient. Screen rotation would be a helpful feature so I can hold my phone upside down to point the microphone forward. P.S. the Cancel button no longer works reliably. I sometimes have to press it 5 or 6 times to cancel a recording.

I love the Merlin app. When it was created it changed radically my way of birding. It's so easy to ID birds and it's even more useful when you travel and you're not familiar with those species I just wish the app would give the option of reading the names in more than one language at the same time, or even the scientific names plus the names in English and another language. When I travel to visit my family abroad and we go birding, I wish I could talk to them using the birds' names in Spanish.

What's new

Share Your Birding Finds!
We’ve made sharing your birding discoveries easier and more fun. Here’s what’s new:
Share That Bird!: Send bird sightings straight to friends, social media, or birding groups.
Life Bird Alert: Share new sightings with a tap and celebrate new finds.
Bird of the Day: Show off your daily bird, and brag to your friends when you’ve found yours!
Improvements: Bug fixes and performance tweaks for smoother birding.
Happy birding!