Bird Song

Wasted no time downloading Merlin Bird ID as soon as I read this article and can't wait to try it. Some mornings, the incessant chirping of birds in the yard don't let me snooze. As much as I love they are out there and being noisy, I wish they would start a bit later. Now, I might learn what birds are out there and if we installed a bird feeder that would prove helpful. I find myself using the Seek app all the time when we go hiking and over time, I have learned to recognize some plants and trees I did not know by name before. 

To me this is a lot like know your neighbors and community - it is isolating when you don't know who is out there. I like that I now know what weeds and wildflowers are growing in my yard and that I can recognize them in the wild as well, understand if the flowering bush in my yard is unhealthier than its peers around the neighborhood. It will be fun to know the names of the birds we often see on our hikes - thanks to the wisdom of the crowds that went into building this.

Merlin Bird ID is more than just a sound identification app, though; it’s the result of tens of thousands of bird watchers and citizen scientists submitting over a million avian audio recordings to Cornell’s Macaulay Library through the eBird app in just the past few years. Given the volume of data, Weber and Macaulay Library research engineer Grant Van Horn, plus other members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, wondered last summer what it might take to create a birdsong identifying feature of the Merlin Bird ID app