I will never not be amazed at the Sound ID feature. And I have spent a concerning amount of time trying to fake a bird call good enough to fool the app. It is my White Whale
I got a great horned owl on accident. It was my paper crinkling. First time I used sound ID.
Some folks are just born with it, I guess
Love this app. Shout out to fellow birders out there.
No joke about a month ago I found out about that app, and now I'm obsessing over bird feeders and trying to run away house sparrows. This app is DANGEROUS, it's probably more addictive than cocaine.
This is the way.
How does this compare to birdNET?
I miss the what's this bird subreddit. That place was so lit, I got birds identified within an hour.
Merlin identifies birds as soon as it thinks it hears one; that is quite nice. I can click on the listed bird and it will jump to the section(s) of the recording where it heard the bird. Iirc birdnet makes you create a selection. I am no expert but they both seem accurate.
I've tried multiple times to get the song ID to work, but the birdsong has to be so loud in the recording for it to detect it that I rarely get close enough to a bird for it to work. I was sad about that, it seemed so cool. And to be honest, for visual ID, I still prefer a bird book. Maybe it's just a me thing.
looking up a new bird I ~~saw~~ heard
While yes it has a bird sound ID, you can also use it to ID birds visually by giving your location and answering a few questions, after which it gives you a list of birds from the most probable to least.
Got like all my redneck family members to download this and they love it so much
Anyone know of any other good similar apps? I've tried multiple plant ID apps over the years but none I'd recommend.
For plants, PlantNet works very well for me.
I use Seek by iNaturalist. It's working well.
I use this all the time, it is fantastic.
Seconded
WhoBIRD has been working well for me. Doesn't have the visual ID stuff that Merlin has, but it's FOSS and identifies by sound, based on location and time of year.
Granted, I don't know enough to know when it's wrong, and I bet it's not great for identifying rare birds, but it's fun.
I totally agree. whoBIRD is amazing.
I did use BirdNet for quite some time before whoBIRD was available, but it's so great to be able to open up the app (whoBIRD) wherever and have it identify the birds we're hearing without having to wait for a network round trip. The somewhat recent feature of showing bird photos in whoBIRD is nice as well.
Running the app from time to time has had me notice birds in the area I would've otherwise missed.
Thanks to the app, I saw a long tailed tit for the first time and even managed to get a few photos! (They were mixed in with other bird song, but the app said they were singing in the area too. After a little searching, we found them.)
Photos:
https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/677904448182940941
https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/678023083037619560
It's definitely an app that would make someone install F-Droid on Android if they haven't already. (As it's only available on F-Droid and not Google Play.)
Merlin isn't open source?
I don't think so, it also includes at least 4 trackers.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
brb looking at birbs
It's fucking so incredibly cool. WE use it all the time just in our backyard when we hear or see a new bird.
Whatever makes you flappy
Well what do you know... I just saw a new bird in my backyard, never seen this particular fella before, wondered what type of bird it is.
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