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.
• 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, 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.

Ratings and reviews

I use this app daily. I was having a lot of fun identifying the many many birds who visit my land, but now that's not possible. The photo ID has never really worked, giving me birds not even in my side of the country. And now the sound ID doesn't work either after latest update. So I'm basically stuck scrolling hundreds of birds to identify by sight, and can't identify through song. Also, the app saves every single sound file to your storage which fills up QUICK if you use this app as much as I.

I love it. It makes a few IDs that make me go "hmmm," but it's a pretty incredible tool. I've started to learn the less easy-to-remember calls, chirps, and bits. Wish list: a phone attachment to capture more distant sounds and a quick start button on my home screen to instantly start capturing calls. Could work better: a way to manually set my location when out of cell range. If there is, I couldn't get it to work (I didn't read any directions, see "out of cell range").

I adore this app, I find it more useful for ID than even the best field guides available. One thing I think the app would benefit from is an offline mode. It's somewhat tedious to have to sit through the "please wait" screen when you're birding somewhere without cell service. Additionally, an option to download your own sound recordings would be appreciated.

What's new

Sound ID is better than over, with additional birds for the United States, Canada and now the common species of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East! Record the birds you hear, and watch real-time results show up on the screen to help guide you to the correct identification.