MEXICO: The Merlin Bird Photo ID program is designed to recognize birds quickly and easily. This new app, developed by researchers at Cornell University, allows backyard naturalists and avian aficionados to identify birds in photographs.
Pictures are selected within the application, and the user encases the bird to be identified inside a box. The user next selects an approximate size of the observed bird, its base color and what the animal was doing when it was spotted. Positioning of the bird is deduced from the user pinpointing the bird’s eye, bill and tail.
“Merlin asks you the same questions that an expert birder would ask to help solve a mystery bird sighting. Notice that date and location are Merlin’s first and most important questions. It takes years of experience in the field to know what species are expected at a given location and date,” the Merlin Photo Bird ID team wrote on their website.
The app then compares the appearance to its database of around 400 birds found around North America. When a list of candidate birds is generated by Merlin, the various species are presented to the user, along with high-quality photographs and recordings of the sounds the animal makes.
Bird data was collected from 70 million observations that comprised the eBird project, which recruited amateur ornithologists. Thousands of backyard bird lovers contributed three million descriptors to the app to improve its performance.
The application offers the shortest possible list of candidate species from which users can select the bird they spotted, based on the information provided and the appearance of the targeted bird in the photograph.
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