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

Total waste of space. Before this new fancy redesign, this was an amazing app. It would hear all of the birds around me and identify them fairly accurately. Then they pushed the update. Now, I can stand in a forest surrounded by literally dozens of birds, and it tells me that there's not a single one within range. For some reason it completely doesn't pick up any of the high frequencies, it can't identify a single bird noise, and it says there are no bird when there definitely are..

I have loved using this app. However, I dont find the new interface easy to navigate after the most recent update. This could be due to my phone (galaxy z fold 4); I just prefer the older interface. Half of the ID/recording button is blocked by another button and I am unable to scroll down on the opening screen. I can just click the top if I'm careful to start recording, but it's just irritating if Im trying to quickly identify birds, hit the wrong thing, hit back, and the entire app closes lol

Very useful app for birders with some flaws. The location data of many more unusual birds, for instance, is not always correct. Then it is not possible to find the watched bird and add the sightings to the life list. I work myself around the issue by switching of location service on the phone. With the new upgrade this became more cumbersome, however.

What's new

Merlin has a new look!
The layout of Merlin has been updated to make the app more intuitive, faster to use, and easier to learn about the birds around you.
Introducing Your Bird of the Day
Get ready to discover a new bird every day with a personalized Bird of the Day picked just for you.
Explore Species While You Listen
Hear a new bird with Sound ID? Now you can read more about the species without stopping recording, so you don’t miss out on other IDs.