Review: The Merlin Bird ID App

Have you ever been out on a walk and heard a strange bird call you can’t identify?
If you’re like us, that’s probably a regular occurrence, and you probably think to yourself, “if only there was something that could tell me what all these mysterious bird calls are”.
Well, if you’re a smartphone user, then there is!

The app you need is the Merlin Bird ID app.

You can download it here: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/download/

It’s made by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. The app is free of charge, and we mean really free, there’s no registering, no adverts or anything like that, just download it and use it. You rarely get something of this quality for free, so hats off to Cornell for this fine app.

By the way…we’re about to carry on singing the praises of this app in no uncertain terms, so we should point out now that we have no affiliation with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology whatsoever, we just love the app.

You can find out more about Cornell and app here: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/.

Bird Sound ID

The app is very easy to use, to identify birds by the sounds they make, just take your phone out with you and when you hear a mystery bird call, simply start the app recording and it does the rest. Below is a screenshot showing a recording taken whilst out on a walk…

The grey smudgy image at the top of the screenshot is a graphical representation of the recorded bird calls. The birds displayed below this are the species that the app has identified.

Your various recordings are stored and ordered by the date they were recorded. If you open a previous recording, you can play it back and the images of the birds below will highlight in yellow as they are heard in the recording. This is great for learning your bird calls.

Not Just a One-Trick Pony

On top of identifying birds by their calls, you can also select an image from your smartphone photos, and it’ll have a good go at telling you what the bird is in the picture. Of course to do this the picture needs to be of reasonable quality, a long shot of a speck in the distance will not work as the app needs something to work with.

And…as if all that wasn’t enough, it also has a full reference section where you can browse birds by category, seeing pictures and hearing examples of their calls and songs. It even has a “Bird ID” section that asks you questions about a bird you’ve seen and gives you a selection of likely suspects based on your answers.

Worldwide Compatibility

The Merlin Bird App can be used anywhere in the world. It uses downloadable ‘map packs’ to store the birds it holds information on. This means you can easily set it up to hold only the birds in your region, saving space on your phone and showing you only the birds you are likely to encounter.

All in all, the Merlin Bird app by Cornell Labs is a great app and well worth a place on your home screen. If you’re still not convinced, just give it a try, it’s free!