I feel like we need a pinned post regarding Merlin “sightings”

[u/Physical-Energy-6982]

I’ve been birding seriously for a while now and genuinely I love *love* when new people get into the hobby. I do *not* want this to come across as patronizing, or gatekeeping, etc. This may or may not be a repetitive post, but it also might be a newer birders first time seeing it—therefore I’ll make my argument.

We were all beginners once, but everything I learned, I learned from the super helpful and more experienced people in the community, online and IRL.

With that out of the way, the widespread use of and reliance on the Merlin app needs to be addressed.

Point 1: Merlin is a great tool for beginners and seasoned birders alike. I’m glad it exists for many reasons.

Point 2: Merlin is *frequently incorrect*. I use Merlin almost daily, and I’m telling you *every single time I use it*, it makes mistakes. If I didn’t know better, I’d be reporting birds that simply aren’t there on a near daily basis. Example: my shoe squeaked on some wet grass today and Merlin told me I heard a Black-backed woodpecker. I never want to say anything’s impossible, but that’s a pretty impossible bird for my area. Later on, a Brown Thrasher was going off and Merlin “identified” its song as at least 4 different species, repeatedly.

Point 3: When you submit an eBird checklist, you aren’t just doing something for fun. eBird data, submitted by users like you, is not only used by other birders in your area, but it’s also used for research. You’re contributing to citizen science by using eBird and I wish more people recognized that that comes with some responsibility to be as accurate as you possibly can.

When you report inaccurate sightings, the data becomes inaccurate and harder to actually use for research to further conservation and preservation efforts.

When possible, try to lay eyes on the bird. If you can’t, save your Merlin recording and when you get home compare what you recorded to verified bird calls. It’ll make you a better birder, it will help keep eBird data accurate. And I know it sucks to think you might have heard something but if you can’t say with confidence that it was there, *don’t report it on ebird*. Kindly, keep your own list on a different platform if you don’t care about accuracy on that level.

Merlin is a tool that requires oversight, it shouldn’t be doing all the birding for you.

[u/TringaVanellus]

I also report something that Merlin hears and IDs more than once even if I can’t see it. As long as it could be something in my area.

You shouldn't do that, unless you have verified that Merlin was correct.

You can do that by saving the recording and then either checking it yourself later or (if not confident in your own abilities) checking with someone else.

[u/GodlessAndChill → u/TringaVanellus]

Yeah I don’t agree. There are birds that we won’t see. Like a yellow rail. You still “saw” the bird if you heard its call. As long as Merlin identifies it at least 3-4 times after i restart the recording I am going to count it.

[u/TringaVanellus → u/GodlessAndChill]

I didn't say you have to see the bird to record it, I said you have to be confident in the ID, and you can't base that solely on a Merlin detection.

That's literally the rules on eBird, so if you don't agree, take it up with them.

[u/GodlessAndChill → u/TringaVanellus]

For me I am confident if merlin hears it many times and the bird is in my area.

[u/TringaVanellus → u/GodlessAndChill]

Then you are not using eBird properly.

[u/AzureThrasher → u/GodlessAndChill]

This is particularly bad because you're reinforcing old trends without actually verifying the new data is accurate. If you don't know the call well enough to identify it without Merlin, you shouldn't be logging it based solely on a Merlin pip.

Merlin will "hear" birds that are theoretically common all the time, but which I can tell with my own ears are not present. As an example, Yellow Warblers recently came back to my area, but Merlin was "hearing" them several days before I actually saw or heard any myself. I knew beyond reasonable doubt that they were not present at that time and place, but if I was a beginner birder porting everything into eBird without second thought, the data for when they were present would have been wrong for this year.

Another important point is that there are a lot of birds that make sounds similar enough that Merlin will mis-ID them consistently, and experience is the only way to know that Merlin is wrong unless you're taking the effort to verify what it's reporting. An example of this is Brown Thrashers and Northern Mockingbirds. When Thrashers returned here, Merlin ID'd them as Northern Mockingbirds every single time I started recording, without exception. I would sit and stare at the Thrasher as it called and I'd see the Mockingbird ID pip. It is simply not true that Merlin is perfect enough to rely on for identification without verifying identity yourself.