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 love it so much. it's so fun and incredibly accurate. I would love to be able to share my finds as an Instagram story, maybe similar to sharing a song from Spotify. It would be cute to have a kind of "card" design to share, like a pokemon, haha. I don't know if the data collected is used for science but if so, I would love for the app to tell the users. Or maybe even offer further literature on the birds you find.

Really love the application. my biggest thing is that sessions no longer automatically save... so when my kids are using the device they tend to forget a lot. Unfortunately I have uninstalled the recent updates and rolled back to an older version that still allows this to happen. I've always been a big believer instead of hard settings for everybody that you just make a toggleable switch that allows people to make the selection for themselves or not. Would love to see this implemented.

I don't really like rating apps unless they leave a lasting Mark and that's what this app has done. I've always been interested in birds but never got around to actually learning how to identify them? this app makes it incredibly easy with the ability to identify them just by the noises they make. I've been in many states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Hawaii, and California and no matter where I go, it has been consistent in giving me accurate birds just based on a call.

What’s new

What’s new in 3.11:
Sound ID is better at listening for birds, and now includes hundreds of new species in Central and South America, Australia, Hawai’i, the Caribbean,Taiwan, and India!
Improvements and new species added to Photo ID
Nearby Places: Get ready to explore! Get seasonal suggestions for nearby places where you can find your Bird of the Day, and other birds you want to see.
Bug fixes and improvements.