Merlin Bird ID

Merlin Bird ID is a free bird identification app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, published by Cornell University. It helps people identify the birds they see and hear and learn about them. Merlin Bird ID draws on eBird, a database of bird sightings, sounds and photos, and it serves anyone from a person curious about one bird to a birder trying to identify every species they come across.

Merlin offers four ways to identify a bird: answering a few simple questions, uploading a photo, recording a singing bird, or exploring the birds of a region. Sound ID and Photo ID, powered by Visipedia, use machine learning trained on millions of photos and sounds collected by birders at eBird.org and archived in the Macaulay Library. Experienced birders curate and annotate the sightings, photos and sounds that the models learn from.

Each species comes with expert ID tips, range maps, photos and sounds, and some sound recordings carry descriptive captions that point out the key sounds. Users get a personalized Bird of the Day, customized lists of birds found where they live or travel, and a personal list to track their sightings. Photos and sounds change with the seasons, and photo identification only needs an uploaded picture and a location, with no cropping.

Merlin covers birds anywhere in the world, including Mexico, Costa Rica, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, Australia, Korea, Japan and China, and the app is available in English and 30 more languages. It is free, supported by Cornell Lab members and citizen-science contributors. It requires iOS 18.0 or later on iPhone, macOS 15.0 or later on a Mac with an Apple M1 chip, and visionOS 2.0 or later.

Use cases

• Identifying a bird heard singing by recording its song
• Identifying a bird from a photo taken outdoors
• Checking which birds to expect at home or at a travel destination
• Building birding skills with ID tips, range maps and sounds
• Keeping a personal list of birds found over time