Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab

What's that bird? Answer 5 questions or upload a photo and Merlin Bird ID will help you solve the mystery.

Merlin is more than just a field assistant to help you identify birds, Merlin is a customizable field guide for birds around the world. Get identification help and discover what birds to look for near you with Merlin Bird ID.

First, Merlin asks you a few simple questions. Then, almost like magic, Merlin reveals a list of birds that best match your description. Pick your bird, then delve into more photos, sounds, and ID tips about your bird! Merlin is fun and easy to use—whether you’re curious about a bird you’ve seen once or you’re hoping to identify every bird that comes to your feeder. The answers are waiting for you with this free field guide app from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

If you have a photo of a bird, Merlin can help. Take a photo, choose from your camera roll, or snap a photo of the viewfinder on your camera, and Merlin's powerful AI will suggest an identification almost instantly.

Features

• Created for bird watchers and nature enthusiasts of every level.
• Intelligent results. No more scanning through hundreds of possibilities! Merlin shows the birds near you that match your description.
• Merlin can identify a bird in a photo using powerful deep learning algorithms. Snap a photo and you'll see a short list of suggested birds to explore.
• Customized location and date tools generate best answers for your neighborhood or wherever you are for any time of year.
• Bird packs contain photos, songs and calls, and identification help for many regions around the world, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia.
• Enjoy more than 40,000 photos of birds, including males, females, and juveniles.
• Learn ID tips from Cornell Lab of Ornithology experts.
• Listen to beautiful bird sounds, including 15,000 songs and calls curated by the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• Powered by eBird to deliver the most accurate results based on millions of sightings from bird watchers across the world.
• Identification tips are available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, German, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, depending on the range of the species.

Best of all, it’s free! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s goal is to help you and millions of others to learn about birds.​

Merlin is the most advanced bird guide app available, and is expanding to new regions of the world every month.


••• Bird Packs •••
Merlin Bird ID currently includes bird identification help for the United States with regional packs for the: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountains, Southwest, Texas and Oklahoma, Alaska, and West Coast. Canada is covered by Eastern Canada and Western Canada packs. Mexico bird identification is available for each region of the country. Central America packs include Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Bird identification help is also available for Europe with a comprehensive Western Palearctic guide, a Britain and Ireland pack, a Western Europe pack, Iberian Peninsula, and a pack covering the Scandinavian countries. Australia packs cover the entire country. Asia bird ID help is available for India, Taiwan, and the areas around Shanghai.


••• About Photo ID •••
Powered by Visipedia, Merlin Photo ID uses computer vision and deep learning technology to identify birds in photos. Merlin learns to recognize bird species based on training sets of millions of photos from birders at eBird.org. When using Photo ID, enter the date and location where you took the photo; those clues improve Merlin’s accuracy by helping it focus on the species you most likely encountered there.