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

Cool program, but the app should have the option to not have location tracking (and work - not a Samsung permissions workaround). I can't add birds while recording, and have to take a screenshot if finding multiple new birds or 'fake it' and just search the second/third/etc by name instead of matching to the recording. If it could run in the background while noting new birds this wouldn't be an issue. The image matcher is quite poor compared to how good the audio matching is. Longer recordings!

This app is so neat! It detects even the faintest birds noises. Once it picks up a bird, it provides a picture and the option of more information. You can save your recordings, too. There's so much to this app that I haven't even explored yet. it's been so cool to see what birds are around me, especially when it detected 14 different species all at once.

The app itself is great but be advised that it uses .WAV files to record the sounds of birds and those files can be huge. I just removed 36 GB of audio off my phone. I couldn't figure out why my phone was running out of space. maybe pick a less large audio format or at least warn people that they are recording WAV files and make them easy to delete from the app

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!