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

Still an amazing app, but the new update made it less user friendly. It no longer remembers default settings, like sorting species by family (why would they remove that???). It is also annoying having to manually re-enter location and time. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. But it is a mild irritation when you are planning upcoming surveys in a distant location. Otherwise, the new update is good and the app is still wonderful.

I love this app. Perfect supplement if you're trying to learn to bird by ear. Sound ID is surprisingly accurate (not perfect of course, please don't exclusively use this app for identification). One complaint is that many of the included audio samples are for Western and Southwest dialects. Very different from what I often hear in the Northeast/Midwest. Thanks, Cornell Lab!

Old app was a 5. I gave them a $125 donation I was so amazed. I have used this app throughout the US, Asia & Europe. This version is painful! The audio ID is still good. The Explore won't work long enough to allow me to ID a bird. And then it switched to some foreign language & there was no return. Hope you have better luck. I'm reinstalling & have lost all the time of reinstalling all the bird packs I lost.

What's new

Location, Location, Location!
- No Location? No Worries! Even without location data, you can set your spot on the map and let Merlin do its thing, providing top-notch answers every time.
- Smoother Messaging
Sound ID Enhancements: We’ve polished our messaging for areas where Sound ID isn’t supported, giving you clearer info and a better user experience.

Upgrade to 3.2 now and dive into a more flexible, privacy-friendly, and user-centric Merlin!