The new Sound ID feature of the Merlin Bird ID app is amazing.
This was our first experience trying it out… 

High-tech birding

I have raved about the Merlin Bird ID app here before, but the folks at Cornell Ornithology Lab have now taken it to the next level. I’ll let Pop Culture Happy Hour’s Glen Weldon do the intro:

People I respect have been talking up the bird-identifying app Merlin for a while now, but I’m not a birder, so I merely noted this information in passing. Then I heard the app has added a feature where you don’t have to faff around with identifying markings or coloring (to people with my kind of color-blindness, most birds classify as “Sort Of Mostly Brown-ish I Guess,” which is not taxonomically helpful). No –  you just hold up your dang phone and record the bird in question’s song, and zap: That there’s a wood thrush, baby! It’s Bird Shazam, and it’s spectacular. Also, somehow, vaguely disquieting. (PCCH Newsletter, 6/17/22)

Coincidentally, Glen’s “Bird Shazam” comment appeared on the very same day as my first real encounter with the “Sound ID” feature of the Merlin app. Craig and I had joined our local Audubon Society for a birding walk, and group leader Madeline asked us to use Sound ID to check out the birds that could be heard but not seen.

Wow! All of a sudden that chorus of chirrups and tweets and whistles we’d been hearing resolved into actual birds, many of which I’d never seen and didn’t even know lived so near our home: hairy woodpeckers, Pacific-slope flycatchers, Wilson’s warblers, brown creepers, and many more. We were hooked!

Taking Merlin for a hike

Yesterday when Craig and I went for our regular hike, we took our phones and binoculars and listened to birds all along the way. It made the hike twice as long as usual, but the results were astonishing.

You know the problem: birds are small (mostly) and zippy (mostly). They (mostly) don’t sit still long enough for you to train your binoculars on them, never mind your camera. They jump about amongst the leaves high in the trees, where they blend in perfectly. Your eye catches movement and you know something is up there, but it can be impossible to see exactly what. On our hikes we might typically catch sight of a couple of dark-eyed juncos, a chestnut-backed chickadee or two, the occasional spotted towhee, and a few Anna’s hummingbirds. That’s about it.

Not on this hike, though! We discovered right from the start how much we had been missing. There were warblers up there! And wrens and vireos and titmice and finches. And lots more. I also discovered that the bird who used to irritate me at dawn with his endless one-note song was a California towhee. Aha!

Here’s how the app works: You select “Sound ID” from the home page, press the record button, and hold up your phone to capture whatever songs are being sung nearby. The app records the ambient audio, and when it recognizes the song of a particular bird, the name of that bird pops up under the recording.

As you continue to record, more bird names get added to the list — and if the same bird sings again, its name is highlighted. So as you continue to record and listen, you start to be able to distinguish the songs of individual birds, as they are repeated over and over. Then, when you stop recording, the app saves the audio, along with the ID data. What’s more, each bird listed under your recording includes a drop-down, where you can hear other recordings of that bird’s songs and calls.

It’s a great way to begin to tune your ear to birdsong — though, as Craig noted, it’s not like they’re singing “Hotel California.” Lots of these songs sound similar to my ears, and it will take a good while to learn to differentiate them, I’m thinking. Still, it’s a start — and a lot of fun.

Caveats

How accurate are these birdsong IDs? Well, the app warns that it makes mistakes, and it lists 685 “supported” birds. So in some parts of the world it’s of no use at all — yet. And we weren’t sure about all the birds that popped up in our recordings, but for the most part the results were very similar between our two phones when recording in the same place (though it’s possible that the app was just making the same mistake twice). What’s more, what sounded to us like the same song (of a black-headed grosbeak, for example) was tagged the same way in multiple locations — a result that would seem to corroborate that particular identification.

Whether this would satisfy more serious birders who are trying to fill out life lists, I don’t know. (They probably know the songs already anyway!) As relative novices, though, Craig and I are not especially worried about making sure that all our IDs are accurate but are more interested in expanding the ways in which we experience and know our fine-feathered friends. For this, Merlin is magic.

NOTE: The birds in these photos made no sound at all that I heard, but I did see them on our Audubon walk. Since they were so obliging as to pose for my camera, I decided to include their portraits here. They’re black-crowned night herons — an adult and a juvenile.

• Download the Merlin Bird ID app from the App Store or Google Play.
• Glen Weldon is one of the hosts of the always delightful and informative Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.
• Buckeye Creek trail (our usual hike): This short loop hike begins at Chabot Equestrian Center on Skyline Boulevard. Take the Kelley Drive exit from 580 and go all the way up the hill to Skyline. Turn left and you’ll find the driveway to the stables on your right a few hundred feet down the road. Here’s a map of the trail (start to the left):

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