3 December 2024

Did you know you can identify bird photos on your cellphone? Merlin Bird ID’s Photo ID function was updated last month with thousands of images from Macaulay Library, the home of eBird checklist photos, providing more real life photos of birds in context.

Here’s how it works: If you want to identify the photo above, by Karyn Delaney, open the Merlin app (download here) and choose Photo ID as shown in the screenshots below.

Choose a photo on your phone or in your photo library. Make it fill the box.

Merlin wants to know when and were you saw the bird because it helps with bird ID.

Quick results! Plus lots of information about the bird.

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I found out about the Photo ID upgrade when the Macaulay Library thanked me for contributing photos to eBird and said they used 3 of them. Since I rarely take pictures of birds I have almost no photos in my eBird checklists. I can almost guess which ones they picked: Two peregrine photos and one mockingbird.

Try out the Merlin app and see how it works.

Add photos to your eBird checklists and contribute to bird identification.