If you’re out and about in nature a lot, then I can recommend the Merlin Bird ID app. It’s a project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, part of Cornell University in New York State in the US. Its aim is to help you identify birds.
What sets Merlin Bird ID apart from other bird-identifying sites and books is that it can use audio. Turn your phone’s microphone on with the app open, and it’ll listen for bird calls. You’ll then get a list of the birds it can identify as it analyses the sound it records. You can even download a data pack for your part of the world, so that it can analyse the sound data offline. Whilst it makes for a big download, it’s helpful for when you’re somewhere remote, and don’t have a phone signal.
I’ve used it a few times. Most notably, we went to Quarry Bank Mill just before Christmas, and I used Merlin Bird ID to identify some parakeets in the trees. Parakeets are, of course, not native to the countryside south of Manchester, but as they were a little distance away, it was good to have them confirmed.
I’ve included a screenshot of a recent day out where it identified:
- Eurasian Treecreeper
- Eurasian Blackbird
- Eurasian Blue Tit
- Great Tit
- Eurasian Wren
Indeed, we then saw most of these birds as we walked around. There is also a visual guide for identifying the birds, but it isn’t (yet) able to analyse photos. However, I find that Apple Photos does a reasonably good job of automatically identifying birds from photos. It’s the audio feature that I appreciate most in Merlin Bird ID.
