The only app I have that I actually like. It's great.
Merlin Bird ID
181–190 of 221 posts
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#182[dead]
Yeah I use it almost everyday. I've gotten to where I frequently recognize new birds. I don't talk about it much because I haven't fully come to terms with entering a bird watching phase of my life, but occasionally I'll say something like "Oh that Northern Flicker is back" and my wife will be totally confused. We live in Brooklyn near Prospect Park and have a backyard so we get a pretty wide range of birds.
I'm on the other side of the continent and a Northern Flicker is the loudest bird outside my window right now :)
(Also identified with Merlin.)
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Surely your local blujays must have heard the hawk somewhere in order to learn its call? It figures that a hawk would occasionally show up in your neighborhood. 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.
There definitely are hawks all around my area.
In this case, while I couldn't see it directly while he was making the call, I had watched him fly to and land in a nearby tree before the call and then shortly after watched it take off. So I can't be 100% sure, but I'd be willing to bet that it was the Jay.
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#184I use BirdNET, which is also from Cornell.
Supposedly BirdNET has a larger data set.
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#185I use BirdNET, which is also from Cornell. Supposedly BirdNET has a larger data set.
Does anyone have BirdNet running on generic x86 hardware? Or is it just for Raspberry Pi?
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#186I love this app! Just started using it a month or so ago to figure out who the loud ass bird in the woods behind my house was which ended up being a Tufted Titmouse (who are now one of my favorites, so awesome looking) and a Carolina Wren (not as pretty but makes up for it with its songs). For the last month, my morning routine has completely changed and instead of sitting inside. I now spend my mornings out back ref…
Not sure what you mean - both the "Explore" part and the Life List both have the pics and the calls together? It is indeed a good app, but my beef is how bad it is at adding birds to your life list. After ID'ing a bird by sound or picture it'll ask you where/when you found it with the worst defaults -- it'll know where you are and what time it is, but it sometimes randomly picks some time/place you've been at months…
If you’re getting serious into birding, a lot of folks do the lists with the separate app eBird, which lets you make lists of birds you’ve seen on say, a given walk in a specific park.
It’s like a digital version of a bird checklist you might find at a wildlife refuge.
(Pro tip, if you have 100 seagulls you don’t want to count individually, you can use X to say you don’t know. Also you can enter a general group like “gull sp.” if you can’t quite identify which kind of seagull they are)
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#187[dead]
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#188If you're interested in this, https://www.birdweather.com/ is a kinda neat automated sound-based bird ID and tracker in a nice little package. I'm not involved with it in any way, I've just seen it around recently and I'm interested in this space. You might also like Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) https://www.wildlife-sound.org/
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#189If you're interested in this, https://www.birdweather.com/ is a kinda neat automated sound-based bird ID and tracker in a nice little package. I'm not involved with it in any way, I've just seen it around recently and I'm interested in this space. You might also like Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) https://www.wildlife-sound.org/
We use this! With BirdNET-Pi gifted some to a couple of friends too!
We configured it so it send me real time alerts when uncommon birds are detected.
Re: Merlin Bird ID
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Buttons don’t work often, screens are inconsistent, results get lost, and more issues. What device are you using, out of curiosity? I use this app almost daily for months at a time across several generations of the Google Pixel, I haven't had any of these issues even one time. I'm not even sure what you mean by "we ID something, but it’s gone by the time we show it to someone". Like, it shows a match while you're r…
> I've found the app starts hiccuping when I'm making a very long recording, but I've learned to just cut it off and start a new one after about 10 minutes. What phone are you using? I record ten hours a day and never get any issues whatsoever, so I'm not even sure what you mean by "hiccups".
Not them, but I had it crash on a three hour recording.