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Since each species has its own song, ditty or squawk including variations and individual riffs, the ability of a machine to identify the species by sound is startling. Flipping the pages of a book back and forth for comparisons is much quicker and more easily accomplished. Scrolling back and forth on the phone is frustrating. Danny either carries a field guide or we have one in the car. But I do not use the app’s illustrations. I often play the Sibley’s songs for an individual species if I can’t identify the bird immediately.

By identifying a species by sound, Merlin is definitely one up on Sibley’s and other apps modeled on printed field guides. Merlin is designed for beginning and intermediate birders and includes not only sound ID, but features photo ID, list-making and descriptions of each species. So the next day I download the free app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with Bird-in-Hand LLC using the amazingly comprehensive database from eBird, information gathered from thousands of birders in the field. The app displays the names of the singing birds, rapidly listing the house wren, bluebird, blackbird and yellowthroat on stage near us.

Not long ago while we’re birding at Pleasant Valley, my friend, Barbara, slips out her iPhone from her pocket, taps on her Merlin Sound ID app and begins to record the bird sound around us.

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