The Merlin app offers quick identification help for all levels of bird watchers to enable us all to learn about the birds across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is endeavouring to improve bird awareness and conservation with what many are calling the “Shazam of bird songs.”
Just like the Shazam app can recognize the name of a song playing near you, the newly-updated Merlin Bird ID app identifies birds by their song with nearly 100 percent accuracy, reports New York Times.
The app, using a Bird ID Wizard, was put together using contributions from tens of thousands of citizen scientists and so far, can recognize 400 North American species. Simply hit the “listen” button, and the app will list the birds behind the calls you’re listening to. It can even decipher different species among simultaneous calls.
Many more people took up bird watching as a safe and engaging pastime during the pandemic, and the more data that is collected via the app, the more information conservationists have to inform their efforts to protect birds.