Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab

I learn so much- i use it everyday!!!! It makes birding so exciting!

i logged a bunch of new birds i saw today and they were in my list for a couple minutes and then they disappeared. i’m very disappointed i keep trying to save new birds and it’s just not working :(

I use this app all the time. My 4 year old grandson likes to “help” me with it. He can now recognize about 20 birds that come to my feeders.

I have deleted and re downloaded this app 3 times trying to get the life list to work, to no avail. it only saves 3 birds to my list despite spending 30 + minutes uploading various photos of birds I have seen over the years with date and location information. extremely frustrating.

I love Merlin bc 1. I’m paying more attention to my surroundings and appreciating nature 2. Incites me to go outside when depressed 3. I’ve now made friends bc of birding 4. The first year is all dopamine bc there’s new birds every season and you’re always adding new lifers 5. After the first year, when it a habit, it’ll encourage me to go out to seek out new birds since i already have my regulars 6. Like geocaching I will find new birds when I travel 7. Helps further science in the little ways The only thing I wish is that there would be a “zoo mode” where I can identify birds at the zoo or pet store even if they aren’t native to my area, maybe not send the data to Cornell but I still want to log them in my life list and learn more about them than the zoo would tell me. I live right near the biggest zoo in my state, have a pass, go all the time, and want to log my flamingos!!!!

Please please please bring back auto save or at least the option to enable it. I’ve lost a few good sections lately because I was not aware this option had changed. And it can be very laggy to save after a long recording, I’m worried the app will freeze or crash and things will be lost.

But PLEASE make it like it used to be so it remembers last location because I use it OFFLINE and currently miss most birds while I struggle to recover location for it.!!Unable to reach app support either

As a young female, self-appointed ornithologist with absolutely no formal credentials but an alarming amount of confidence, I need to formally report that Merlin Bird ID has fundamentally altered my personality. Before this app, birds were just tiny feathered weirdos staring at me from power lines with absolutely sinister energy. I did not trust them. Why were they screaming at 5:42 a.m. every single day? What emergency meeting was happening outside my window? Why do cardinals always look like they’re one inconvenience away from committing tax fraud? Now? I sit on my patio with my coffee and my bird app like a 74 year old widow named Linda who hand feeds squirrels and says things like “that sweet boy is back.” The second Merlin identifies a Carolina wren I whisper “good morning beautiful queen” like we used to work side by side in a cigarette factory in 1952. This app has turned me into the type of person who gasps over a horned owl like I just spotted a celebrity at Target. I pause entire conversations because “WAIT SHHHH I hear a mockingbird.” I know bird gossip now. I know who’s fighting. I know who’s flirting. I know which bird outside my house is yelling for attention and which one genuinely has something important to say. I do not care if this hobby makes me geriatric. If loving peace, nature, and tiny feathered musicians is wrong, then put me in a recliner and call me grandma immediately.

The app is just incredible, especially so since it is free to use, 10,000% recommended. My only issue is I often can’t get birds to be added to my Life List, and I can’t find any guidance on what’s going wrong. I log 4 birds the same way, and only 2 will be logged to my Life List. But don’t let that stop you from downloading! Hopefully this is a bug that will be resolved.

Very good app and very good quality. An idea to put somewhere if the bird is endangered or not. Overall very good app