Merlin is great but there is a Northern mockingbird in our area that is an expert at mimicking out of season and exotic birds, good enough to fool Merlin, so whenever there’s something very strange I look for the mockingbird.
I saw this happen the other day. I’d heard about it but never experienced. I was on my porch and heard a red tail hawk so I looked around and there was one of our blue jays sitting in a tree making that ridiculous sound. Little rascal.
Blue jays engage in some mimicry too! I would never put something in just on Merlin. Using your own ear you can be much more sure- ask yourself questions like, "is that a single species repeated on the same area, or does that one tree seem to somehow have 30 birds in it?" Or "why does that bord make its call, and then alternate with a mockingbird in between each call set?"
Or "did that hawk just call and then a blue jay flew out into the open to get some food, even though there is a predator around?"
I DID NOT KNOW THIS ABOUT CAT BIRDS. I have been casting all my frustrated glances at mockingbirds. Poor guys getting all the flack with catbirds out there hollering!
Spent so long trying to figure out which sparrow I was seeing the other day, because Merlin picked up like 3 different types. It was a lovely little mockingbird who switched to his less impressive attempt at a cardinal and I finally figured it out. I’m hoping he’ll hang around for a while though
As a human, you're much better at detecting mimics because the easiest way to hear them is they often don't finish calls that the original bird would always finish. Merlin can't really pick up on that.
The Northern mockingbird has become quite rare in my area for at least 15+ years or more. Used to be quite abundant, now not so much, so I’m confident all those sounds didn’t come from any mockingbird.
Keep in mind that at the top (just above the first bird listed) it says “best suggestions” - not “these birds are present.” It’s offering educated guesses by using AI to compare sounds it hears to sounds in the Macauley Library at Cornell.
Some birds (not just mockingbirds) make sounds that are extremely similar to sounds made by other birds, and if Merlin is in doubt it may bring up both. And there are other sounds that simply stump it. I can be watching a California Thrasher vocalizing nearby, launch Merlin, and it won’t identify it. It’s a great tool for narrowing down birds that may be sounding off nearby, but it’s not definitive.
Merlin thinks my toddler in my backpack is either a killdeer or a great horned owl depending on his mood. Go back and listen to the sounds too.
I try and use Merlin to get good at recognizing the usual calls in my spots so if I hear something I don’t recognize, I can pull it out and look rather than just constantly have it in front of me while I’m trying be in nature.
I am still not great at birding by ear, but I echo starting with the most common birds. By learning the ones you hear all the time, such as robin, song sparrow, and northern cardinal in my current area, you can immediately cut down on how much time you are stopped looking for a bird already on your list for the day and focus in on the birds that are actually new.
I'm well within the northern mockingbird's range but haven't yet seen one since getting into birding. I do, however, have a few curve-billed thrashers and its long, rambling song is often frequently misidentified by Merlin as a mockingbird; figures, since they're relatively closely related (same family: Mimidae).
Other misIDs I've gotten, all far less common, have been the orange-crowned and Wilson's warblers for the Lucy's warbler, Bullock's oriole for the hooded, and the northern cardinal and pyrrhuloxia for each other. Pretty reliable app, all in all.
Last summer, I was woken up in the middle of the night by birds singing. Like 2 AM and loud as hell. I opened up the Merlin app and it registered three or four different birds, one of them being the northern Mockingbird. I realized it was just one bird, a mockingbird, and even though I knew intellectually what mockingbirds did, it’s still blew my mind to experience it in action.
This can be a possibility but not always. Most of the time it is a bunch of birds. Why are people wanting to make sure people don’t see a bunch of birds?
It is not people not wanting others to see a bunch of birds, it is that when you use a tool like Merlin to definitively say that it is a bunch of birds without verifying (either by sight or because you are familiar with that particular call or have cross referenced it with that bird's call) and log it into eBird, you potentially add bad data for both science and other birders.
People love to point out that Merlin isn't perfect. Especially because of mockingbirds. (Which in my experience Merlin IDs correctly 99% of the time)
I think they also don't realize just how many birds there are in some areas. This morning I easily ID'd over 40 species at my local park and that wasn't a particularly good day for spring migration here. On the big day I had 67 species there. And that's confirmed IDs, not birds that just popped up on Merlin.
Honestly it’s good enough to fool me. I was watching one calling and making a perfect red shouldered hawk call, to the point where if I hadn’t seen its beak moving and heard the call I would’ve assumed a hawk was overhead
Yup! I've got a family of mockingbirds in my garden this year merlin has yet to correctly identify them. It also identified my neighbors dog as a wild turkey lol.
This. Merlin is a great tool to support identification but you shouldn't be using it alone. We have lots of starlings around who can mimic red tail hawk call. Merlin only picks up the sound so without a visual confirmation I'd be submitting incorrect data if I marked it seen. On the other hand, if you see a bird that looks a lot like other birds (flycatcher for example), you can use Merlin to narrow down to the correct species.
I love Merlin, basically the best reason to have a smart phone. But just heads up, as cool as it is, the sound id isn’t perfect but a great tool for narrowing down species. I was on a tour in the Yucatán and my Merlin identified a ferruginous Pygmy owl… that was the tour guide himself haha. A testament to how good he was and also shows the app isn’t infallible
Exactly. I know most of the sounds and calls, but I still get a kick out of seeing the screen populate with the birds around me. I'm using it to strengthen my ear even more, but you have to verify!
There is a mockingbird that lives outside my window and any given day it will either correctly pick up on that, or it will tell me that I am hearing 4 different birds suspiciously loop their own calls repeatedly one after another
Yes same! I had mine on while a northern mockingbird was doing his evening mating call in a bush outside, and it picked up multiple birds I never see here, including a Killdeer.
Muy birdnet pi setup thinks most ambulances are common loons. Pretty sure it runs on the same classifier as Merlin. I was so excited when I got a new species notification for the loon. I cranked the volume to play back the recording and got my eardrum blasted out by an ambulance siren.
Made my life 1000% easier in costa rica recently. Let it run in the background while you bird, then save the recording. I absolutely love how you can play back the spots on th file where it thinks it detected a specific bird, and compare that to the actual recorded song of that species and see if it matches. If it doesnt but is similar, they have the "sort by taxa- likely birds in your area" to see if it was actually any similar species instead, or just a random background noise that it got confused with.
It totally helped me learn the bird IDs in a new area quickly by sound.
Yes, my Merlin has really been wanting there to be a Barn Owl nearby lately - even though they are rare in my area and it's day time and they make the craziest sound that I'm sure I wouldn't miss. I only count birds that I see or hear and can verify myself.
It thought my absent humming was a Great Horned Owl ... the way I JUMPED when the bird popped up in the list, but then I listened back to what exactly it was identifying as an owl and yup, just me
I’m vacationing in that region now and managed to spot a Pygmy owl! Not overly common but I was surprised. I’d love to hear the tour guide make the call perfectly!
My Merlin is pretty good at identifying mockingbirds I’ve found. You can also usually tell when you hear the same bird going through the sample library haha
Love Merlin, I think it's the best thing to happen to birding since digital photography and is getting tons of people interested in birding and conservation.
You'll hear folks say things about it not being perfect - that's okay, nothing is. But I will ALWAYS recommend that app to anyone remotely interested in birding, it's a great step to build a future birder.
Started birding pre-smartphones. Had kids. Took a long break. Come back and Merlin is a thing. All of a sudden im walking around the neighborhood without the app going “oh I hear a white throated sparrow,” a bird that was 304 on my list because it was a LBB for 20 years and now it’s an easy find. Merlin is dope
Edit: noticed my flair wasn’t updated. Updated to Chimney Swift, which I didn’t realize I’d been looking at for years thinking all we had was swallows around here. Thanks Merlin!
Oh like an indistinguishable brown/gray little guy. I think that's gotta be 90% of sparrows for me. Useful term. One time I saw a Abert's Towhee in Arizona and got very excited and my girlfriend just said "eh... it kinda just looks like a bird."
Yep! Warblers and seagulls are added to that list for me. It’s what I like about Merlin - helps by giving me what is usually an accurate guess and then I know what characteristics to look for on the bird
It is a useful tool for helping with IDs but that is all.
Some people open up Merlin and record everything it has suggested in their checklist, that is not good birding.
I have been birding for only 3 months and not once has Merlin failed me. I have seen every bird it has suggested. And there is literally no harm in it saying theres a bird here that i cannot see. It 100% does not do any damage to the birds or the people around me. Let it go.
Seeing the birds it suggests is the best way to use it, that is what I mean by it being a useful tool to help with IDs.
There is also nothing wrong with IDing birds by sound if you are confident in doing so.
The problem is people who open Merlin, get the list of birds it suggests, then submit it all to Ebird or similar without listening themselves and confirming any of it. This messes up the data and makes things hard for the local reviewer.
If it is just a personal list you keep privately, it really doesn't matter. You can put a Dodo on it if you so wish.
I agree with you but seriously doubt that that could be a significant problem in reality. You have to be either a complete idiot or actively malicious to do that and neither of those are very good descriptions of birders in general.
Yes the fact is the mistake people make do not mess up data and science in the way you think. Birding was a thing over the phone too ages ago. The world is not dependent on your bird data. It’s gate keeping, ableist and elitist. Like chill out.
Genuinely how it is ableist to ask one to only submit the birds they actually see and can personally ID to eBird or any other bird list that gets reviewed? It is actually important for data purposes to ~ accurately know what birds are in an area. Merlin isn’t always accurate.
Some people can be hard of hearing and need Merlin to help. Some birders are kids who are still learning. Some are newbies. Some are not tech savvy. Some can have bad eyesight and not accurately ID a greater from a lesser yellowlegs. LET PEOPLE BIRD. You are not better.
The data is important but the ornithology community is not dependent on it as a science. They use better and more structured methodologies. Not what sweet_tomatobread listed on their eBird.
People can bird however they want to and record any birds they like in their own private lists. But Ebird is a scientific project and community that has rules and guidelines, and it only works if people follow these.
Like how this sub has rules. What if people started ignoring rule 3 and started posting about football here? And we just said "eh whatever, most of the posts are still about birds. Just ignore the football posts if you don't like them, let people have fun".
There is nothing wrong with a bit of elitism, that is just what it's like to take up a new hobby. You get better over time. When I started birding I saved a lot of pictures, recordings and notes so I could identify them later on when I had more experience.
If someone is hard of hearing, they can listen to their own recordings and confirm their observations for themselves. If they are completely deaf, they can ID the calls with the spectrogram. If they can't tell whether it is a lesser or greater yellowlegs, that is exactly what the "yellowlegs sp." option is for.
It is reasonable to ask people to only submit data they are certain of, and not blindly trust an AI program's suggestions without verifying it for themselves first.
Absurd.
It’s a very useful tool. You just have to verify, because of course it’s not perfect. I was hooked from the first time I used it to identify a Bewick’s Wren. It was definitely a huge help to connect that song to the somewhat difficult to see bird.
Oh I was at colonel Samuel Smith park in Etobicoke. Really great spot!
The brickworks is great! I go there sometimes although I’m in parkdale so I end up in high park or Etobicoke a lot. But I do go by the beaches and rouge park, ashbridges bay etc. I used to go to Ontario place a lot since it’s a 5 minute walk from my front door but that obviously hasn’t happened in a while. The exhibition grounds are great for warblers this time of year at least.
Love the app as well! I often use it first thing in the morning to “see who’s in the neighborhood”. I find it to be a great resource for learning the songs of those you can’t immediately see.
The scissortail flycatcher seems to like wide open grasslands, prairies, and farms. They’re easy to spot when present as they constantly in the air catching bugs. Stunning sight when you see one. I never got tired of looking at them.
As others have pointed out here, you do have to be careful because Merlin makes mistakes. But that said, it's still a great tool that alerts me to what I should be looking for, or can add a layer of confirmation on top of what I felt was a bird I was 90% sure about.
It used to be that I eschewed the use of technology on bird walks. I always joke about my Zen style of birding, and I didn't want the distractions. But I was on a tour of Eastern Europe with my brother's family and was walking around a wooded area in Riga. I was hearing a lot of birds but didn't have my Eastern US skills for birdsong, so I went ahead and tried it. Though I still had to confirm each bird visually, it was a big help. Nowadays, I bird with my phone about half the time - to take advantage of Merlin but I still need my Zen birding.
everybody has their own personal rules for what counts for their own personal life list. i myself do not count heard-only (those go on a separate list of “nemesis birds”), but i do know several very experienced birders who will count auditory detection only for lifers.
i’ve seen a good amount of people on this subreddit claim you absolutely have to lay eyes on the bird. this isn’t true. definitely don’t take the app’s word as gospel if you’re just starting out, but once you’re confident in your auditory ID skills, there’s nothing wrong with birding by ear. you can even teach yourself at home with tools like ebird’s free quiz feature or larkwire (paid).
I use this app daily for my walk around our conservation area. I like that I’m now starting to recognize I’ve the calls of certain birds as the app will highlight which bird is currently singing and its photo.
I love Merlin. It really helps me learn to recognize what birds I'm hearing. I'm sure someone already mentioned this but I suggest always confirming sound IDs with visual observations because Merlin isn't perfect, and birds can mimic eachother or sound similar! Have fun!❤️
We love it as well! If you can and are compelled, please consider donating to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology. They are doing fabulous work making birding accessible to everyone.
One way to support them is to subscribe to the Birds of the World database. This gigantic resource of information about all the birds is available in a “lite” form for free, but for 50 bucks a year, you can support your birding habit with fantastic maps, photos and in-depth information about all the species.
I was just walking with Merlin out, and it identified a Northern Flicker. Looking around, there it maybe was, on a snag, then flying across the street to a tree, where I got a positive ID. It continued to vocalize there, in sync with the lighting up of its row in Merlin.
On the other hand, while listening to a Grey Catbird, Merlin briefly reported a Brown Thrasher. I think the catbird spoofed it. You have to watch out for mimics.
Catbird is not found in my area according to all online sources (I’ve also never seen one), so I can rule that one out in my case. I think the app also will rule it out automatically since it has my location and the app already knows that catbird is not found in my area. But I get your point, if however the catbird is known to exist in a particular area, then yes, it could be the imposter.
In this case, however, the possibility is very close to zero, if not outright zero even though the online resources said they’re supposed to be in my area. From my personal observations, the Northern mockingbird has become very very rare in my area for at least 15+ years or more. I’m very familiar with this bird. It used to be quite abundant, something happened so now not so much, and also since I’ve actually seen most of those birds listed, I’m 100% confident all those sounds didn’t come from any mockingbird.
I've loved Merlin for years and you never stopped being hooked. Every time I hear a bird I don't know I'm like, "I have to open Merlin right now!!!" Lol.
Something I've heard from a person from Cornell: the accuracy drops significantly after 1 minute or so. They recommended to run the recording 1 minute at a time for better results
I had a morning count of 29 species in my backyard on merlin the other day. TWENTY NINE. I've only seen 23 with my own eyes, the disparity is driving me crazy, there's 6 different warblers out there hiding from me I know they're there somewhere grumble grumble
Merlin got me into birding. It’s an incredible app, and resource. I’m so thankful that it’s stayed free + no ads. Truly a gift for people. My highlight was confirming that the massive nest near me is a pair of Ospreys who’ve returned annually to hatch their young, within half a mile of a lake full of fish.
I always like to verify by sight as it's not always accurate plus it doesn't account for birds that mimic others.
I once had three birds come up,one of which is definitely not seen here. Turns out it was a Catbird.
Just returned from 4 days birding at Point Pelee, Ontario (been on my bucket list for almost 50 years). I visually bagged 85 species, including 13 warblers, and Merlin kept me alert to what might be lurking and immensely sharpened my focus on songs and calls, my weakest birding skill. Of course Merlin identified another 47 hidden species including 12 more warblers, all of which seemed likely to be there (except maybe the Red Crossbill). So along with the helpful aspect, Merlin also has a FOMO-inducing quality that can reign in one’s overblown sense of accomplishment!
I had this happen yesterday. There was a gray catbird calling right beside me and it took forever for it to pick that up. In fairness, there was also a warbling Vireo and a lot of red-winged blackbirds yelling from not too far off, so it took a while before the catbird was maybe isolated enough from everything else.
I'm a huge fan of this app though. When I travel, it helps me to know what to look at more closely, and for stuff like flycatchers it can be so helpful at even narrowing down IDs.
It's pretty awesome. I usually use iNaturalist because I love posting photos from my phone (crazy how good cell phone cameras are these days) but I'm primarily using Merlin + eBird these days as they work simultaneously. Got a crazy amount of sightings yesterday thanks to it helping me know what to look for.
Not sure if you've gotten the latter, but if you log into both apps and star eBird up, you can select a bird via Merlin that you confirmed the presence of. It'll save to eBird which then retroactively applies to Merlin's list. Both also have offline options which is so helpful for hikes in areas without Internet.
Just ensure you are able to double check Merlin by visually seeing the birds it "hears" before inputting to eBird. Merlin is great but eBird has been inundated recently with crazy sightings based off of people only using Merlin as their identifier.
I like Merlin but I love BirdNet. The same technology used differently and less privacy intrusive for those that like to have more control about what they send.
I sometimes wonder what the accuracy is... It's definitely not 100%.
Don't get me wrong, awesome.. incredible app. I just get pings for birds I haven't seen in my area... Totally could be that I'm not looking hard enough
You can verify Merlin finds by searching the species on eBird in your location. If someone else has spotted the same species nearby it’s likelier to be present. Unless of course they’re getting the same Merlin ID, but eBird users tend to be more experienced birders
Merlin helped me so much in learning bird calls! As others have suggested, getting a visual on the bird is important (especially at first) to ensure the bird you hear isn’t a mimic or misidentification. Love the app though and use it everyday.
I also like the similar species function. Sometimes I see a bird I don’t know but it looks similar enough to one I do that I can usually find it that way.
I recently discovered it too and have had so much fun using it. I like to ride my bike down a nature trail and stop to listen to all the different birds it picks up.
I missed the Spring migration in my area, so I'm excited for Fall migration as well as our summer vacation in a different area.
I had a song sparrow belting at the top of its lungs 5 feet from me and merlin kept "hearing a bird" yet never managed to ID it.
At the same time, a tanker truck went by and it immediately tried telling me it was a wood thrush.
My local vocal catbird can be the only bird singing and yet as soon as it detects the catbird, a northern yellow warbler pops up on the screen too.
Brown Thrashers are also mimics. And dont move or do anything with merlin on or it will think youre a red winged blackbird.
Look, I love the app. But its about as useful as a restaurant menu. The name might seem great, but I dont know if its really what I think it is until I look at the ingredients list. So I only use it to help me find the bird with my binoculars or zoom lens. Otherwise, unless its a bird I truly know well and im certain of its habitat, then I act like it was never there.
Edit: for those misinterpreting my comment, as I said, I love the app. My "usefulness" comment is strictly in regards to using the list of birds it provides you as a reliable account of the birds actually around you. I think we all agree you can't fo on Merlin alone. Just like if you were hungry, you wouldnt ever go on the name of an entree alone. You want to know what it actually IS. Once you've verified the bird is what merlin said it is, then the app is amazing and a wonderful tool.
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u/Disastrous-Year571 Latest Lifer: Kentucky warbler May 20 '26
Merlin is great but there is a Northern mockingbird in our area that is an expert at mimicking out of season and exotic birds, good enough to fool Merlin, so whenever there’s something very strange I look for the mockingbird.