Birders are using their cellphones and tablets in the field and at home to identify birds they see with the help of the Free Merlin Bird ID app. Named after the wide-ranging small falcon – Merlin – the Merlin Bird ID app is a remarkable, easy to use resource for birders.

Join birders around the world who are using their handheld devices – cellphones and tablets – in the field and at home to identify more than 7,100 bird species with the help of the Free Merlin Bird ID app – plus Merlin provides much more information than just identification points. Knowing it can be hard to identity an unfamiliar bird by paging through a full-sized field guide, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology designed Merlin to be a birding coach for beginning and intermediate birders. Merlin asks you questions an expert birder would ask you to help solve a mystery bird sighting.

You will notice that the date and location are Merlin’s first and most important questions asked: It takes years of experience in the field to know what species can be found at a given location and a given time of year. Merlin customizes your list to include the species you are most likely to see at your location on the day you are referencing. Merlin shares this knowledge with you based on more than 800 million sightings submitted to eBird from birders around the world.

Merlin also asks you to describe the color, size, and behavior of the bird you saw. Because no two people describe birds exactly the same way, Merlin presents a shortlist of possible species, which are based on descriptions from Cornell Lab experts as well as thousands of birders who helped “teach” Merlin. But you may ask, “Can I use Merlin in the field where internet service is questionable? Yes, although Merlin is based on using an internet connection, it is engineered to work offline too.

Photo IDs Too

If you photograph a bird that you are not familiar with, you can identify it and learn more about the species by using the Photo ID feature in Merlin and it will provide an ID if you have a good photo, or a list of suggestions for photos that show few ID features. The Photo ID works completely offline, so you can identify birds from photos when you are far from cell service – well, actually, anywhere.

You can also play recordings of the songs and calls of each species. The photos and audio recordings included in Merlin attempt to cover the full range of variation of each species, and are selected and edited by the collections team at Macaulay Library and their partners. The photographs and bird song recordings used in Merlin were sourced from more than 5,000 eBird contributors who uploaded their media to the Macaulay Library.

While using Merlin, you can browse among more than 36,000 stunning bird ID photographs, and more than 18,000 audio recordings, identification tips from bird ID experts, and range maps from the ultimate internet reference source about birds: Birds of the World.

Free Merlin Download

Merlin operates on iPhones, iPads (iOS 11 or newer), and Android 5 or newer cellphones and note pads that have more than 500 MB of available memory. To download the Merlin app, visit the Apple App Store or Google Play and search for ‘Merlin Bird ID’. It’s free and easy!

For all the information about the Merlin Bird ID app, all it offers, and how it works, see

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ and for more info about downloading Merlin, see https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/download/

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