I hope this is ok to post here. I figured there was probably a lot of overlap with iNat and Merlin users and there doesn’t seem to be a forum for the Merlin app. I’m pretty bad identifying bird calls but am trying to learn and finding the Merlin app helpful. I’d like to get better with it before th…

I use Merlin some; my experience is this: don’t totally rely on the app; it’s often correct, but not always. At my home it semi-regularly “identifies” birds that I know don’t normally, if ever, occur here. Try to listen to the bird yourself, the closer the better. Distant calls or lots of birds sing…

[image] molanic: I don’t know when the call it identified actually starts and stops… is there lead time before the call? I haven’t tried to figure this out very often, but I think there is maybe a tiny bit of lead time. Not very much at all though.

Merlin very frequently “detects” birds that are not actually there. As discussed in many threads, you should not use auto-recognizers (including iNat’s CV) to ID beyond what you can verify (with assistance from knowledgeable human identifiers, if needed). Merlin is a great tool, but overreliance is…

just speaking generally, a lot of times, unexpected IDs are related to the training data and / or the recording itself. (higher quality recordings in general will be more likely to provide good ids.) just for example, if you have a little bit of handling noise during recording, that could be interpr…

[image] swampster: As discussed in many threads, you should not use auto-recognizers (including iNat’s CV) to ID beyond what you can verify (with assistance from knowledgeable human identifiers, if needed). Yeah, I’m not submitting any observations here or on E-bird based on Merlin suggestion…

Is there a way to easily clip sounds within Merlin so they can be uploaded to iNat and the IDs verified? I just re-downloaded this and have been really enjoying using it, but i am not good with birds and i know just like the iNat ID i can’t really rely on it to make reliable observations of these sp…

[image] charlie: Is there a way to easily clip sounds within Merlin so they can be uploaded to iNat and the IDs verified? There is none within the app that I am aware of. And just to clarify my previous comments, I really appreciate the app, I just use it with caution. If Merlin can hear the …

Absolutely agree. I would emphasize again that Merlin is a great tool for preliminary IDs and I’ve found it generally more accurate than people in this forum seem to indicate. However, it does have its flaws; I would recommend using it as a starting point and then looking for the birds it IDs (if it…

it’s certainly more accurate than my plant-biased brain at identifying birds :D I wish they’d make a crossover with iNat though, or even a better crossover with eBird, i tried cross posting a few things to eBird and that didn’t seem a very efficient process either.

I was playing around with the app some more and figured out a couple more things. I was looking at some of my recordings from last fall that I’d saved because they supposedly had “rare” birds in them that I wanted to look into more. The jumping ahead to the bird call in the recording and highlighti…

Merlin App Sound ID

Nature Talk

Topic		Replies	Views
Merlin audio-ID gets big shout out in NYTimes Nature Talk	1	1094	August 1, 2021
Importing Merlin IDs to iNaturalist General	15	3709	November 11, 2022
Something needs to be done about long audio recordings General	55	1374	June 15, 2026
Is it possible to get IDs just of sounds (no photos)? General	18	6840	December 3, 2022
In the Merlin Bird ID app: can you list the bird IDs for just a sub-clip of the recording? Nature Talk question	2	516	July 29, 2021

Merlin App Sound ID

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