Learning any hobby is always easier with a mentor — even a virtual one. Take birding, for example. I’m no techie, but I have been using a smartphone app to learn bird songs and calls for the last couple of years, and I’ve been extremely impressed by its ease of use, accuracy, and just plain fun.
So if you are new to birding, or even if you’ve had a pair of binoculars hanging around your neck for years, this app can help. Best of all, it’s free!
Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Labs is available in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, or by clicking here. And not only is it free, it is also ad-free and there are no in-app purchases needed.
The Merlin Bird ID app contains identification support and photos, sound recordings, maps, and descriptions for more than 10,000 bird species from around the world, with more species being added constantly.
“The Merlin Bird ID app contains identification support and photos, sound recordings, maps, and descriptions for more than 10,000 bird species from around the world, with more species being added constantly,” says Kathi Borgmann, communications manager for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which developed and owns Merlin. “More than 29 million people worldwide have installed Merlin on their phones, with June 2024 seeing the greatest number of Merlin users, more than 5.4 million during that month alone.”
Borgmann says that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers the app for free because it’s their mission to advance the understanding and protection of wild birds. “We’re a nonprofit organization that is funded primarily by members and donors, so it is those generous people who help us provide Merlin at no charge.”
The pioneering sound-identification technology was integrated into the previously existing app in 2021. Merlin is aptly named for a small, fast, fierce falcon. It’s as easy to use as downloading the app to your smartphone, then going outdoors to listen for singing or calling birds. When you hear a nearby bird that you’d like to identify, simply point your phone toward the sound and push the app’s “Sound ID” button.
The app listens to the sound and makes a suggestion as to what bird species it’s hearing. Once the bird stops singing or you want to stop recording, simply push the stop button. You then have the option of listening to recordings of other individual birds of the same species, already loaded onto the app, to see if yours matches. That’s helpful because, just as people have different accents and dialects depending upon where they live, birds do too.
But wait, there’s more! You can also identify a bird by taking a photo of it with your smartphone’s camera, and the app will identify it. Or, you can answer five basic questions a
bout a bird you saw and the app will make the identification based on the information you provide. As a test, I tried it on a common bird that everyone knows — a robin I saw mugging a worm in my backyard — and the app spit out the correct answer in no time. You can also explore a list of birds common to your area.
You don’t need the latest and greatest smartphone to take advantage of Merlin. For years I used an ancient iPhone 8, upgrading during the last year to an iPhone 15, and Merlin works well on both. By the way, the sound ID feature operates completely offline, so you can identify birds anywhere.
W.H. “Chip” Gross is Ohio Cooperative Living’s outdoors editor. Email him with your outdoors questions at whchipgross@gmail.com. Be sure to include “Ask Chip” in the subject of the email. Your question may be answered on www.ohiocoopliving.com!
