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.
I cannot login to the app. It has been unable to determine my location and give accurate sound IDs. The standard bird ID doesn’t return anything at all. Even the help and about merlin pages don’t load. This app was great before today but now it simply doesn’t function. Edit: They released an update the next day, but none of these bugs were fixed.
Last Update Killed My Sound Identification. Friday morning I was able to identify birds by sound. Update saying sound was improved flashed on screen so I updated. Big mistake as when I tried sound identification, in the same place it just worked, it couldn’t identify one bird. I’ve uninstalled 3 times and still won’t work. All app permissions set. Feederwatch won’t open on my phone after last update. Frustrating.
Unfortunately I’m not in the position to buy the premium version due to a sickness in the family and I have a lot of free time BUT with the free version, this app feeds my thirst for knowledge by giving all kinds of info and sound bytes for every single birds calls, songs, flight calls and even different dialect and variations of those as well. Very well put together and helps even the novice bird watcher/listener like myself. If I could afford it, I’d buy the premium version just because!
Seems like the app works really good so far identifying birds by calls and songs. The registering process was slightly cumbersome and seemingly repetitive, maybe my connection was slow… also, I was directed to the Cornell Lab to start a co-account(?) to document birds on their system, but it didn’t seem to sync and I couldn’t do anything with it. Again, maybe a poor connection. Otherwise, I’m very happy to have this app, it’s been fun!