- Merlin Bird ID is a go-to app for bird identification with more than 40 million downloads
- It can identify over 2,000 bird species by sound recognition
- A future update will share audio recordings with eBird, a huge biodiversity database
If you’re into bird watching, you need no introduction to the popular Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. With over 40 million downloads worldwide and over two million monthly users in the UK alone, Merlin is the go-to bird identification app for many.
I’m in my forties and bird watching has become one of my recent new hobbies, after years of photographing birds while testing cameras and lenses. And while I’m learning, I simply can’t identify all the birds I see or hear, especially in my local nature reserve, which is a tree route for varied and sometimes rare bird life all year round, and a popular birding area.
The app helps me identify the birds I don’t know by their calls/songs, using machine learning audio recognition, and gives me lightning fast and almost always reliable results with a picture for each identified bird. It’s super helpful.
I can also feed the app one of my photos for identification, such as those taken on a recent outing with the Sony 400-800mm lens, with the results based on location data and other information from a database of more than 2,000 bird species.
So I was happy to hear that the app — which is free for iOS and Android, with offline bird packs downloadable by location, including the US, Canada and Europe — is getting an update that will help users like me give back: integration with Cornell’s own eBird database, as reported by the Guardian.
A new wave of citizen scientists
eBird is a huge citizen science biodiversity database with over two billion recordings logged worldwide since its launch in 2002. And it’s set for an influx of new data – the Merlin Bird ID app update will in future allow bird identifications to automatically flow directly into the eBird database.
Jessie Barry, from the Merlin project, told the Guardian: “Upcoming feature developments will create an even better link with the eBird systems, so we can use data from what users ‘hear’ with Merlin to monitor bird populations.”
Bird conservation is a hot topic, what with declining bird numbers. Britain, for example, has 70 million fewer birds than 50 years ago. So here’s the good part: these records can provide vital information for conservation efforts around the world.
Barry added: “These data help create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support and inform ecological management strategies.”
Despite the cautionary note about the app’s outright accuracy, with concerns from some that it occasionally misidentifies birds, the Merlin Bird ID app update could be a big boost to bird conservation efforts.
Since eBird is directly connected to the go-to bird identification app, eBird will receive more data from millions of users who don’t need to make any special effort to participate; they just need to continue using the app as before to record and identify birdsong.
I love the idea that I will be one of a new wave of citizen scientists around the world, where the recordings I make play a small role in monitoring bird populations. And the increase in recording data is likely to further improve the performance of the app.
Okay, I’m out with my phone, I hear the birds calling…
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