171–180 of 221 posts
Loving these kind of apps :-) I personally use WhoBird, which runs complete local on your android device, so it works also when you don't have internet and is available on fdroid ( https://f-droid.org/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/ ). Will give merlin a shot as well to see how it compares
Then I opened the app and my 'bird of the day' was a merlin.
To me, Merlin is the shining example of what "a computer in everyone's pocket" could have been. Such an amazing app that connects so many people more intimately with the world around them. I get occasional nudges to support their organization, but it's a clear and direct appeal, there are no dark patterns that I'm aware of.
The sound id in particular is just an amazing way to really extend what's possible for most people, and provides an on-ramp for people to identify more birds by ear alone (and in general to pay more attention to sound when in nature).
I might argue that Merlin — and especially eBird — lean a bit to heavily to the competitive "high scores" view of birding; given the impact of climate change on bird populations, encouraging people to travel the world and see as many species as possible is clearly problematic.
But that's a minor quibble, and Merlin remains one of the few apps I'd unconditionally recommend to anyone with the faintest chance they'd use it.
I would love for someone to make a birding/citizen scientist app that's well gamified. This is basically pokemon. You go places and find different creatures and collect them.
iNaturalist is great for logging observations (their iNat Next app is their new one). They also have an app called Seek that I think is more aimed at kids, but it comes with trophies and streaks and stuff like that.
In general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it. There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.
I have a bunch of Blue Jays around my house and it turns out they are so good at imitating a specific hawk species(blanking on its name) that Merlin actually reports it as the hawk! I went and listened to real recordings of that hawks call and I couldn't tell it apart from the Jays imitation call. Now, I know it's technically possible it was a real id, but Im pretty sure the bald eagle it detected was actually one of…
Machine identification can still need some manual confirmation, even though this app does a really good job. It’s not a confirmed sighting until you have a visual confirmation.
I love this. It used to work like magic but something happened and now it barely recognizes birds for me. Only if they are really close. Anyone else? Maybe my hardware is failing? I also travelled and loaded other packs and wonder if I messed up my DB.