Merlin Bird ID
To me, Merlin is the shining example of what "a computer in everyone's pocket" could have been. Such an amazing app that connects so many people more intimately with the world around them.
I get occasional nudges to support their organization, but it's a clear and direct appeal, there are no dark patterns that I'm aware of.
I'm friends with some of the researchers on the Sound ID portion of this app! The team's gone to great lengths to make sure the machine learning models and evals are solid.
Under the hood, Sound ID is a great example of how "domain-expert-driven" careful research can give more reliable results than just feeding in data and hoping for the best.
It’s so great this app is getting attention. Hopefully the devs/PMs come here and pay attention.
The sound ID works very well, especially in the jungles/forests of Colombia with zero network availability.
The rest of the app needs a lot of love, though. Buttons don’t work often, screens are inconsistent, results get lost, and more issues.
Features: I’d love an iNaturalist bridge. Going back into a previous recording shows “No matches” when the original capture did. Many times we’re with groups in nature, and we ID something, but it’s gone by the time we show it to someone.
A quick starting point would be to add a quick feedback button vs opening a web form, so issues can be reported conveniently.
And a resounding thank you to everyone making this app possible!
Be careful when playing the bird songs. A few days ago I clicked on the cardinal song that was in my identification list and the male cardinal nesting in my hedge went NUTS and I’ve not seen either of them since, and used to see them daily. They’re very territorial.
I’m afraid that I scared them away from an active nest by accident just playing around with the app. :(
Of interest:
> Sound ID is trained on audio recordings that are first converted to visual representations (spectrograms), then analyzed using computer vision tools similar to those that power Photo ID.
Yeah, the spectrogram scrolling by at the top isn't just a cute gimmick, that's actually how the recognition works...
I've been birdwatching (birding?) actively for a few years now, but only this year did I start using these sound identifiers. What a boon it's been! I've already spotted over a dozen new species by sound alone, and also learned to identify some of them by myself.
It really has opened up a whole new venue of enjoying this hobby. At least here, machine learning/AI has a clear, positive impact.
I love this app. I use it all the time.
But I do have a complaint, that you can't upload an image via the web from your PC. For those of us who use a DSLR for our birding photos, the UX to have to transfer images to our phone to send them through the app is really painful.
It isn't the end of the world. It just makes me ID my birds in other ways. But it would be nice to provide non-mobile UX options.
In general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it.
There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.
We have a Mockingbird in our backyard (or more precisely, we live in his/her territory) that impersonates a Gila woodpecker. We were able to record it. Playing back the video and using Bird ID actually shows it as a Gila Woodpecker.
Loving these kind of apps :-) I personally use WhoBird, which runs complete local on your android device, so it works also when you don't have internet and is available on fdroid (https://f-droid.org/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/). Will give merlin a shot as well to see how it compares
This app has been great. I've used it a lot to identify the birds that inhabit my back yard.
I tried using it in New Zealand last year, and it wasn't as effective as in the US: I think it hasn't been trained as well on the native New Zealand birds, many of which aren't found anywhere else.
Amusingly, it identified turkeys when we were in New Zealand, which I was irritated with because there clearly weren't any turkeys in New Zealand. It turned out I was wrong when we came across a flock of them in the Waikato area running around in a sheep field. A local told me that they were brought there around a hundred years ago and are mostly left alone because nobody eats turkey in New Zealand.
I would love for someone to make a birding/citizen scientist app that's well gamified. This is basically pokemon. You go places and find different creatures and collect them.
If you haven't tried birding, try it. You'll like it. It's like collecting Pokemon, but IRL.
I was thinking of trying to run this at home: https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go
Love this app.
I never thought I would ever actively watch for birds when I hear them. Or that I would be able to say "this is clearly a Wren". Or that I have a my favourite bird (Wren as well btw).
This is the first time I’ve heard of this kind of app, and it honestly sounds like a little piece of magic. You just hold up your phone, and it tells you which bird is singing nearby. There are often birds outside my window some I know, some I don’t. I used to just wonder quietly, but now it feels like I might finally get some answers. Especially when I’m out in nature and see those beautiful birds with long tails it’d be great to finally know their names. Also, when my kid asks me “What bird is that?” I might finally have an actual answer instead of just guessing. I think I’ll try it out one morning. Even recognizing just one new bird might make my whole walk feel different.
Fantastic app. My wife and I are gradually becoming able to recognise more and more birds by their call. This is great because the human ear is better than the app at rejecting environmental noise - so we can spot birds by their call even close to a noisy road when the app cannot.
The app, at least on my Pixel 6, struggles with very high frequency calls - e.g. long-tailed tits.
My best spot yet? A nightingale in Wimbledon.
BirdNET-PI[0] may be of interest to this crowd. It uses a Raspberry Pi with a microphone to identify birds continuously based on their calls.
It's worth being aware that the developer of the Android app asserts that "...this app doesn't share user data with other companies or organizations" but according to Exodus Privacy this is not true: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.labs.me...
My father is in his 80’s, has poor hearing aids, but still goes out daily with his dSLR and Merlin to see what’s around him and he still gets great shots. I’m really happy Merlin exists.
I love this app and use it every few days. The Macaulay Library at Cornell, where this app is made/supported, has a short write up on the underlying tech here: https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/2021/06/22/behind-the-scenes...
Note that the recent iOS update seems to have introduced a bug whereby even after stopping recording, the app in the background will continue to use SIGNIFICANT battery life, so I've needed to start force-closing the app after using it.
Another parent in my kid's Cub Scout pack told me about this a few years ago. It's been really cool to use on camping trips, and lately I've been using it while walking the dog. There's a lot more different types of birds around me than I had realized.
If you're interested in this, https://www.birdweather.com/ is a kinda neat automated sound-based bird ID and tracker in a nice little package. I'm not involved with it in any way, I've just seen it around recently and I'm interested in this space. You might also like Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) https://www.wildlife-sound.org/
As an amateur bird photographer I love this app, but I wish there was some way to pinpoint the direction the sound is coming from.
I have wondered if perhaps with 3 microphones positioned a specific distance apart from one another, an app could compare their relative volumes and show the user the exact location of a bird. Any smart HNers know if something like this is possible?
I tried this yesterday and set it up for my wife. I was amazed at how many birds it picked up. There must be some amazing technology in the audio processing.
My favorite part of the app is the spectrogram - I'm not sure exactly why but seeing the songs has made learning which bird goes with which song so much easier.
Also a shout out here to Bird Song Hero: https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/bird-song-hero/
I identified a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-whiskered_bulbul in our garden thanks to this amazing app! Me and my wife love birding and at the end of the year we compare our scores, it is playful entertainment. And we are introducing our daughter to it, it is so cute when she identifies one!
I'm a regular user, and I highly recommend it. / Here are some things that I'm not clear on (admittedly because I haven't researched them yet):
1. Are recordings shared with Cornell? By default?
2. Is it "recommended" or "expected" that I try to get a visual id on the birds, too?
I recently found this app and I'm loving it. I actively use this when i go for walk, hike and camping. Thanks team for the amazing work
I love this app, but after going back to review some of the rare birds I’ve noticed that many of my saved recordings have inexplicably disappeared.
I do wish it could also identify other insects/animals. I originally got the app to identify whatever bird sounded like a squeaky door or wooden swing, and eventually saw that it was a squirrel.
Great app. One improvement I'd like is that if you play back sounds from the app you are allowed to cast the sound to an external speaker. I cannot.
Discovered this app a year ago and love it. Use it almost everytime I'm out on a walk or a bike ride. Glad to see it's getting some love here. I echo the sentiments of another commenter that said it's the shining example of what "a computer in everyone's pocket" could have been.
Didn't realize they had a photo ID now. I've been using it for sound id all the time.
The photo id function correctly and quickly identified the house finch hatchlings in my backyard spider plant nest when ChatGPT or Claude could not.
This app is awesome. The only minor complaint I have is that it does not handle long recordings well. For example, I left my phone near the window for an hour to identify as many birds as possible and the recording cannot finalize properly due to (supposedly) huge size of the produced file.
I've been using this for years - amazing while traveling.
I wish they'd add some non-bird noises to it as a courtesy since there are often whips and calls that are non birds, like insects or mammals. I think it would add some depth and the overhead shouldn't be too high.
Love this app. It’s really made me realize how little bird diversity there is in the suburbs where I live.
I opened it up in a natural research area once and it lit up with so many more species than I’d ever heard near my house.
Love this app. You don't have to be a professional birdwatcher (if that's a profession) to use it. Just open it, and start listening. It's really fun to see what kind of variety of birds around you.
I love this app, it's incredibly good on the Sound ID stuff. There is a Wildlife Trust nature reserve near where I live and I've found it incredibly useful to work out what I'm hearing/looking at.
This app is super useful to me because I'm always hearing new bird calls—from eagles and hawks to starlings and, yes, even the crows. It even motivated me to crate a BirdNET-PI (recognizing birds by sound). I highly recommend this app.
Berlin's Museum of Natural History (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin) has a nice app for identifying plants and animals called Naturblick. It's available in English.
https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/research/naturbli...
Merlin is far less capable in developing countries either because there’s less available crowdsourced data, or it’s intentionally suppressed to reduce its use by unskilled poachers
I love Merlin! It's worth noting that some of its early funding was provided by the National Science Foundation: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1010818
I won Merlin once. I didn't know you could win the game, but I was relaxing in my backyard and suddenly it notified me that I had found the merlin. I was so excited. I hadn't known that a merlin was a kind of bird.
I do wonder how accurate Merlin is. I certainly can't tell the bird calls apart, and I don't usually spot the bird in question, so it could just be lying to me half the time, and I'd probably never notice. But I sure do love the app as an amateur bird-liker.
Love it. I do very occasional birdwatching, so I still don’t know most of the birds I meet. What I like about Bird ID is that when I see in binoculars a singing bird I can quickly identify it, check photos, and really confirm that it’s exactly that bird.
I’ve heard from more experienced birdwatchers that it can false identify in some cases, so I always try to confirm visually, but anyway, for my casual use it’s more than accurate enough.
Amazing... I have the same idea for car sounds! You know, when different cars make random noise here and there, and you don't see what's wrong!
My <2yo son started excitedly pointing out birds flying by a kitchen window at home so we placed a feeder on the glass and he loves when they eat while he's eating. Then I found this app to start to try and identify the different frequent diners together. Was amazed at how well it worked even through the screen on the window.
The Sound ID is amazing. Been using it for a few years now. I usually just keep it on while I'm hiking and it identifies over a dozen birds in 20-30min, nearly all of which I've eventually verified are in the area.
The photo ID feature is okay, but I assume that's because the photos I take on my phone of far away birds is too pixelated.
I actually want a similar ID feature frog species; i hear a lot of croaking
I normally use BirdNet app for birdsong, and it looks like that is from Cornell as well. Does Merlin use the same tech under the covers?
I use BirdNET, which is also from Cornell. Supposedly BirdNET has a larger data set.
This has been great, it helped me ID an Osprey, I was where I didn't think they'd be.
Its ID'd a Peregrine Falcon twice, I've still not seen it.
It does list Red Kites as Common Buzzards, I am not sure how to provide feedback to update this.
I tend to use Merlin, and Seek as I walk around Essex. Seek doesn't seem to know about Sessile Oaks.
I've been using it for a few years now just to identify the local (Arizona) birds in my neighborhood. It was also fun to use it when I was in South Dakota last year. I've gotten most of my family interested in the same, just through use of the app
Big fan of this app! It makes it so easy for the beginner bird watcher to immediately get results. Sound ID is mostly what I spend my time in.
I do find myself wishing Sound ID would identify additional wildlife beyond birds. Anyone heard of such a project?
Another app I enjoy is Seek by iNaturalist!
I love this. It used to work like magic but something happened and now it barely recognizes birds for me. Only if they are really close. Anyone else? Maybe my hardware is failing? I also travelled and loaded other packs and wonder if I messed up my DB.
I really like this app, but last night I had an encounter in the dark with the most weird alien sounding bird, that uses so low frequencies that the app couldnt make anything out of it.
I realize this is a fault of my phones mic and not the app, btw!
I think the bird was one of the snipes (dvärgbeckasin?) because I met them before.
My 7 year old loves this app. He was running around the yard and going on walks with me like he was catching pokemon. He is not yet aware of Pokemon Go. I prefer he become a bird nerd in the short term if I can manage. Really cool stuff.
A wonderful app that's helped me learn about so many birds!
It is surprising that this app can mistake the human voice/whistles for some birds (try hooting like an owl or whistling like a sparrow/starling)!
Amazing technology. Sometimes I wish they would gamify this tech, or make it into a social activity. A kind of 'pokemon go' for birdwatching. It would be a great opportunity to get people more interested in nature and conservation.
I was wondering what kind of bird was chirping outside my window this morning. I should have had this app.
I was visiting Yosemite a year-ish ago and a guide recommended this app and it was fantastic. My kids also loved getting the real-time info on what they were hearing, and trying to spot the various kinds of birds.
Strongly recommend it (though admittedly, I don't use it often in suburbia)
Beautiful functional website, I got hooked from that last woodpecker post that ended up on HN.
I have been using it for a year since we bought a small farm. I donated to support them just last month. Great app. Only thing I see trip it up is mockingbirds.
The only app I have that I actually like. It's great.
Wonderful app! Collecting birds is great fun and another fun use is to try and fool it by making my own bird noises and see if I can pass. Red-tailed hawk is my speciality. I can fool it ≈50% of the time once I’m warmed up.
I love this app. I let it run in the background when I walk my dogs at home and when I'm traveling and it is amazing how well it connects me with the world around me.
Love this app, saw a guide using this app on an early morning birdsong walk—gave it a try and it's really good. Very accurate and super easy to use.
I think a lot of serious bird enthusiasts use this in the UK.
I know there are many apps for plant identification but does anyone have a recommendation for a good one?
(iSeek mentioned in another comment doesn't seem to be available on iOS where I live)
I recently discovered after years of using this app that it's possible to have the names of the birds in other languages than English, it's an option in the app settings.
I love this app!! This and iSeek (plant/animal identification via photos) are a blast. Lived in the jungle in souteast Mexico the last couple years and I'm constantly reaching for these.
This XKCD is ten years old:
It didn't take the full ten years, though Merlin has gone from "pretty good" to "amazing" in the last few.
I’ve used this app for a while, it’s really good and I’d highly recommend it if you want to learn more about the birds where you live in an accessible way.
I love this app for bird sounds. I found ChatGPT is pretty accurate for pictures of birds or plants as well.
I really wish this existed for web as well. Why do I have to transfer photos to my phone in order to run ID on them?
Great app!
In my experience, it works pretty well in Europe, but so so in East Asia (doesn't know many birds there).
Does this have ads? What is the Schibsted tracker for?
I really wish this existed for web as well.
To folks in the Finger Lakes, the lab that makes the app regularly posts tech jobs on Cornell.edu, though that is likely impacted by Cornell's current hiring freeze.
Not reading just to say it is amazing and use it every time I know I will hear bird. It is even on my bed side so I can check any unusual bird during the morning bird session.
I've been using Merlin (Pokemon GO for adults if you will) for a few months now. It's been pushing me to be outside more, explore, and be active in general. The social aspect is great too. I have friends who share when they come across a new one that we haven't seen in the area before. Kudos to the program.
Also so not sorry to throw off the algorithm at a local aviary identifying birds from tropical parts of the world.
Using this one quite often :)
This was only 10 years ago https://xkcd.com/1425/
I'm a little disappointed that the photo on the landing page isn't, you know, a merlin [1].
Is it just me or am I right to be disappointed that the home page doesn't seem to have a merlin anywhere?
Then I opened the app and my 'bird of the day' was a merlin.
I can't even select woodpeckers because apparently they're not supposed to live here? Not even a way to turn off that filter. Woodpeckers are very common here
Would love this for my Meta Ray Bans and generally have wanted this for all animal sounds heard on hikes and elsewhere.
I really love Merlin as a hobbyist nature photographer. Not just the sound ID, but even more importantly it has a wonderful function that allows you to visually ID a bird from a photo. I don't know much about birds, other than having an appreciation at a distance and finding them photogenic, and Merlin has helped me learn a lot about the birds I've photographed as well as identifying them. This is one of the most important apps on my phone. One of the best things I've seen come out to the public from academia.
Its awesome to see the Cornell Lab of Ornithology continue its work in this way. I first heard of it through seeing mention of the "Haikubox" which is a self-contained BirdNet device. In looking it up I see that there is another commercial device and a DIY Raspberry based hardware. All are reviewed at the below link:
https://becausebirds.com/bird-auto-id-showdown-comparing-bio...
My wife and I learnt to do a bird call with our hands, the app actually identified it as a type of dove, we were very surprised
It’s great to see it works globally and not just in America
Used it a couple of nights ago to find out that here in Berlin we have a massive Nightingale population
love this app
iNaturalist is yet another nice app
[dead]
I love this app! Just started using it a month or so ago to figure out who the loud ass bird in the woods behind my house was which ended up being a Tufted Titmouse (who are now one of my favorites, so awesome looking) and a Carolina Wren (not as pretty but makes up for it with its songs).
For the last month, my morning routine has completely changed and instead of sitting inside. I now spend my mornings out back refilling and cleaning feeders, putting out some peanuts to appease the squirrels, and then plopping down on the deck with some coffee/breakfast and MerlinID running on my phone.
I'm no good at learning a new human language but after a month of using this app regularly, I can consistently ID not just the different species, but also some individual birds by their distinct calls and voices.
The only thing I wish it had is a way to catalog individual birds and have recordings of their calls and pictures of them saved together.
Hats off to the devs of this app, hands down the best app I've used in a long time!