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

I like the app overall, very useful. However, the recently added auto-playing of video clips when identifying birds is VERY distracting -- PLEASE make it optional! Also, navigation needs improvement. It's often impossible to return to the main "Identify" page from "My Recordings" without quitting and restarting the app (back button only goes to previous recordings). I also wish Lifelist entries could 1) be sorted by location and 2) show every time/place you've IDed a bird.

I have had to re-download it several times, causing me to lose all my history every time. I was able to add birds manually before, now ɓI can't even add the birds manually. It is refusing to add when they come up on the scan. Now it just closed itself while I was writing this letter! This is so incredibly frustrating for an avid bird watcher! This would be an absolutely wonderful app if it would just work!

This app is awesome! One of my very few complaints about it currently is the map. When I go to mark a new bird found, the entire map is grayed out and cant see anything. And thats with my location on. I'm unable to see where I marked birds or any of my locations because you can't see this map at all. Please fix this and it's back to 5 stars!

What’s new

- ID Tips: Enjoy bite-sized bits of birding joy as you listen! While running Sound ID, keep an eye out for short videos and photos that will help you identify and learn more about the birds you are hearing.
- Improved Search on Explore Species: Discover bird species near you, at different times of the year, and in any other location in the world with a new, expanded search feature!
- Sound ID now includes hundreds of new species in Central and South America, India, Taiwan, and Australia!