Description of 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.
The Britain and Ireland pack is available through a partnership with the British Trust for Ornithology. Bird identification help is also available across Europe with the Western Europe pack, Iberian Peninsula, a pack covering the Scandinavian countries and a comprehensive Western Palearctic guide.
Comments
Thank you for sharing this
My wife and I have often wondered "what bird is that?" Now we will be able to find out. Smile. Thank you!
Great App
It does a pretty good job identifying bird sounds and offering suggestions to compare. There's a down arrow above the bird name you tap to get to the songs and calls list. It switches to an up arrow above the bird name when it displays that bird's sounds etc. I have no reason to go into the picture id part, but each bird does have a brief description in it's information.
When it is recording, Voice Over switches to the phone speaker. You have to double tap the microphone and stop buttons on the screen, two-finger-double-tap does nothing.
IOS 15X causes problems with jumping focus, if you have one of the afflicted phones, but that's an Apple problem, not the app's.