Happy New Year: Bird Photos and A New Bird Identifying App

Welcome back and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all.  In this post I will share more of the photos taken during my participation in Project FeederWatch.  I will also discuss the latest version of Merlin, a bird identification app with real-time offline bird identification for 650 species.

I previously wrote a post regarding Merlin and other birding apps, and also the various birding research projects available to participate in including the Christmas Bird count, which is now ongoing.  This post can be found in the right hand margin under 'Featured Post".


First, Enjoy The Bird Photos:

Downy Woodpecker

Blue Jay

White Throated Sparrow

Black-Capped Chickadee

Dark-Eyed Junco

American Tree Sparrow

Black-Capped Chickadee

White Breasted Nuthatch

Merlin Bird App Now With Photo ID:


This latest update is simply fascinating.  In the past, the Merlin app could help identify a bird by entering parameters such as size, shape, colors, location, etc.  Now, this app can identify the bird species from the photos you take on your smartphone or digital camera.  And as mentioned above, the app can identify 650 different species.

Merlin App Depiction

You can choose a photo that you just took, one from your photo library, or even take a photo of another photo, for example, one on your digital camera.  The app uses computer vision models developed from over 1.85 million photos.

For a full description of the Merlin app, which is free and available for both IOS and Android, click on the this link from the E-Bird website.

With all of the excitement surrounding this app (yes, this is exciting for bird watchers!), I thought I would put it to the test.

I tested it by identifying three of my photos, it correctly identified a Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, but incorrectly ID'd the White-Throated Sparrow, but that photo was a little dark.  I think that's good results for a first try.  I will continue to test the app and report my results in future posts.

Until next time.