Bird ID - iPhone to the rescue.

If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).

BarkingBeans Coffee

BarkingBeans Coffee

Michael H
Supporting Member
Marketplace
Member's gallery
Today I discovered a cool feature on my iPhone. I am a rookie birder. I mean a real rookie. After transferring a couple of photos via Snapbridge to my iPhone I discovered it was happy to help me identify them. Didn’t know that feature existed so sharing in case others weren’t aware. When I hit the information button I saw the look up bird and the phone was happy to identify it and give me information.

BAF7C20B-B2BB-44B3-9E17-593E94A63675.jpeg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.


A70ED2BE-FDCE-43F6-A8EA-33283E863209.jpeg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
Member's gallery
Another app I find useful is Seek by iSeek Naturalist. I think it is also somehow affiliated with the Cornell Ornithology group. Merlin is dedicated to birds and is great. iSeek will id plants, trees, mushrooms and even insects. I find it about 90% accurate with my own ID. A few times it has proven me incorrect in my ID too.

That is a very cool feature you pointed out on the iPhone. Mac OS also has the same thing in the latest version of the Photos app.
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
I installed that. They serve different purposes. With Apple I get an image presented to confirm match and with Cornell I have to answer questions to be presented a list of birds. Both are useful. Different approaches and results.
Click to expand...
Merlin also has a photo ID option. The only question it asks, apart from which photo to use, is location. Location helps on ID if you provide it.
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
Today I discovered a cool feature on my iPhone. I am a rookie birder. I mean a real rookie. After transferring a couple of photos via Snapbridge to my iPhone I discovered it was happy to help me identify them. Didn’t know that feature existed so sharing in case others weren’t aware. When I hit the information button I saw the look up bird and the phone was happy to identify it and give me information.

View attachment 48132

View attachment 48133
Click to expand...
A new feature that was added recently is identifying by sound. it works really well. Instead of hitting photo ID hit identify by sound. Hit record. It will ID the bird song it hears and it is very accur.
 
Member's gallery
BillW said:
Merlin also has a photo ID option. The only question it asks, apart from which photo to use, is location. Location helps on ID if you provide it.
Click to expand...
@BillW yes this did the trick as the question method did not. I will see if this works in South Africa. Nice that its self contained in the app. These birds were silent so couldn’t use the sound method. Thanks everyone for the tips.
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
@BillW yes this did the trick as the question method did not. I will see if this works in South Africa. Nice that its self contained in the app. These birds were silent so couldn’t use the sound method. Thanks everyone for the tips.
Click to expand...
Great.

I use Merlin a lot.

Make sure you download the bird packs for areas you go to. They are free and cover much of the world. I believe there is a bird pack for South Africa and one for Botswana, among many others. Need to download the packs where you have a good internet connection. Best also to set up locations in the app in advance (roughly anyway), as they may need an internet connection. A number of locations will be saved in the app and can be used thereafter when there is no internet available.
 
Member's gallery
BillW said:
Great.

I use Merlin a lot.

Make sure you download the bird packs for areas you go to. They are free and cover much of the world. I believe there is a bird pack for South Africa and one for Botswana, among many others. Need to download the packs where you have a good internet connection. Best also to set up locations in the app in advance (roughly anyway), as they may need an internet connection. A number of locations will be saved in the app and can be used thereafter when there is no internet available.
Click to expand...
Yes this is a great feature of it. What’s not clear to me is how the photos ID works since it’s one database with 8000+ Birds. I have downloaded the South Africa pack already.

When you use Merlin a lot how are you getting photos into your phone/tablet?
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
Yes this is a great feature of it. What’s not clear to me is how the photos ID works since it’s one database with 8000+ Birds. I have downloaded the South Africa pack already.

When you use Merlin a lot how are you getting photos into your phone/tablet?
Click to expand...
I don’t do that in the field. If I have photos that I want to edit (I shoot Raw), I edit them and usually upload a jpeg of photos of birds I want to ID to an online SmugMug gallery. Then download to my iPhone or iPad from SmugMug, where I have Merlin. This may only make sense if you are already planning to add photos to a SmugMug gallery. I suspect other online photo sites might do the same.

I can also airdrop photos from my Macs (iMac on the desk and MacBookPro for travel) to an iPhone or iPad. Not sure if Windows and Android have a similar function — would expect they do.

I suspect you could use SnapBridge in the field to download jpegs from your Z9 (or other Nikon) to a phone or tablet, allowing you to use Photo ID in the field. I have not tried that.

Not sure if Photo ID downloads the entire database for the world? Or only for those countries or regions for which you have downloaded a bird pack. I generally have downloaded all the available birdpacks (other than overlapping ones), so I have not tested this.
 
Member's gallery
I have an iPhone full of birding apps but nothing on the iMac on my desk for bird identification from an image. It would be very useful rather than going through an export to the cloud to then select the image by Merlin on my phone. Does anyone know of a bird identification app that works in a web browser or is stand alone on a desktop?
 
Member's gallery
Garam Masala said:
I have an iPhone full of birding apps but nothing on the iMac on my desk for bird identification from an image. It would be very useful rather than going through an export to the cloud to then select the image by Merlin on my phone. Does anyone know of a bird identification app that works in a web browser or is stand alone on a desktop?
Click to expand...
The method I mentioned in the first post will work if you have the images in the Photos app. Click on the information button and you should see the option I show in the first post. Not a bird app per se, but should work reasonably well.
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
The method I mentioned in the first post will work if you have the images in the Photos app. Click on the information button and you should see the option I show in the first post. Not a bird app per se, but should work reasonably well.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this. Yes, I could export from Lightroom and import into Photos (which will also put it on my iPhone). Then I can use my Merlin app on my phone to identify the bird from the image. That appears to be the most efficient method currently. In a perfect world, you could publish directly to Merlin from Lightroom, just like you can publish to Flickr.
 
Member's gallery
Garam Masala said:
I have an iPhone full of birding apps but nothing on the iMac on my desk for bird identification from an image. It would be very useful rather than going through an export to the cloud to then select the image by Merlin on my phone. Does anyone know of a bird identification app that works in a web browser or is stand alone on a desktop?
Click to expand...
I see from the Merlin/Cornell Lab website that Merlin will now run on an Apple computer with an Apple M1 chip (in addition to running on an iPhone or iPad). Presumably also the new M2 chip models. Sounds like no Mac Intel or Windows version, at least at this point.

That should mean I can use Merlin on my M1 MacBookPro, but not on my 2019 Intel iMac. Going to try it.

Here’s a link:

merlin.allaboutbirds.org

Download Merlin Bird ID for iOS and Android

Apple Merlin runs on iPhones and iPads with iOS 16 or newer, and M1/M2-equipped Apple computers. To download, click on the button below or search the App Store for "Merlin Bird ID." Android Merlin runs on devices with Android 6 or newer. To download, click on the but
merlin.allaboutbirds.org merlin.allaboutbirds.org
 
Last edited:
Member's gallery
Garam Masala said:
Thanks for this. Yes, I could export from Lightroom and import into Photos (which will also put it on my iPhone). Then I can use my Merlin app on my phone to identify the bird from the image. That appears to be the most efficient method currently. In a perfect world, you could publish directly to Merlin from Lightroom, just like you can publish to Flickr.
[/QUOTE
Click to expand...
Merlin works pretty well for me by just taking a photo with my phone of the bird displayed on my camera or computer screen - no need to download images to your phone
 
Last edited:
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
Yes this is a great feature of it. What’s not clear to me is how the photos ID works since it’s one database with 8000+ Birds. I have downloaded the South Africa pack already.

When you use Merlin a lot how are you getting photos into your phone/tablet?
Click to expand...
You connect a card reader to the lightning port of your iPhone or to your iPad. I usually load photos onto my iPad and airdrop them onto my phone.
 
Member's gallery
Calson said:
The microphone on the iPhone is marginal for recording bird song but I found an adapter that allows me to connect a small self-powered external shotgun mic which improves its sensitivity.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P785XPM/?tag=backcogaller-20

I would like to be able to upload WAV files from my sound recorder to a server to identify the bird songs as the recorder is magnitudes better than recording to an iPhone.
Click to expand...
While I’m sure your method is much better at recording than the iPhone alone, I’ve been very impressed at how well the iPhone records bird songs with its built in mic. When there are several birds singing at once it had no problem isolating each.
 
Member's gallery
BarkingBeansCoffee said:
Today I discovered a cool feature on my iPhone. I am a rookie birder. I mean a real rookie. After transferring a couple of photos via Snapbridge to my iPhone I discovered it was happy to help me identify them. Didn’t know that feature existed so sharing in case others weren’t aware. When I hit the information button I saw the look up bird and the phone was happy to identify it and give me information.

View attachment 48132

View attachment 48133
Click to expand...
Merlin is not perfect either especially with birds it rarely sees in a given area. Other sources like this have been far less reliable. I just found and photographed 6 species of sparrows in a morning and Merlin was wrong completely on one but did well on the others. I usually have more than 1 view of a bird to present to Merlin and depending on what it sees in the view presented I can get different ID from the same bird. It has been worse in generic searches on the internet which this seems to do.
 
Member's gallery
BillW said:
I see from the Merlin/Cornell Lab website that Merlin will now run on an Apple computer with an Apple M1 chip (in addition to running on an iPhone or iPad). Presumably also the new M2 chip models. Sounds like no Mac Intel or Windows version, at least at this point.

That should mean I can use Merlin on my M1 MacBookPro, but not on my 2019 Intel iMac. Going to try it.

Here’s a link:

merlin.allaboutbirds.org

Download Merlin Bird ID for iOS and Android

Apple Merlin runs on iPhones and iPads with iOS 16 or newer, and M1/M2-equipped Apple computers. To download, click on the button below or search the App Store for "Merlin Bird ID." Android Merlin runs on devices with Android 6 or newer. To download, click on the but
merlin.allaboutbirds.org merlin.allaboutbirds.org
Click to expand...
Thank you for the tip. I have used Merlin on my phone by air dropping from my mac studio. Now I just need to export a jpg from light room classic or nxstudio to my desk top and then drag and drop into photos and do a serious crop if needed in photos or in LRC or NX before export because I cannot zoom photo in Merlin on mac studio like I can on iphone.
 
Member's gallery
Garam Masala said:
I have an iPhone full of birding apps but nothing on the iMac on my desk for bird identification from an image. It would be very useful rather than going through an export to the cloud to then select the image by Merlin on my phone. Does anyone know of a bird identification app that works in a web browser or is stand alone on a desktop?
Click to expand...
If your iMac is from 2017 or later, it is able to take the new MacOS 13 (Ventura) upgrade, which has the bird (and plant) identification function in the Photos app.
 
Member's gallery
I like Merlin and iBird Pro. Merlin is free (from the Cornell Lab for Ornithology). iBird Pro, on the other hand, used to be a one-time purchase. (I think I paid $30 US for it several years ago.) Unfortunately, iBird Pro changed the app to a monthly/annual subscription plan this summer. If you upgrade from an older version, or buy it now, they will allow you to keep using it for free until August 2023. Then your only choice is monthly or annual subscription payments. I find that iBird Pro seems to be a little more accurate (most times) than Merlin with Photo ID, and it seems to offer more information on any given bird species. I use both when it's a bird I'm unsure about. If they both concur on the bird species, then I feel 99% confident that that is the correct bird. For these reasons, I'm going to keep using my current (aging) copy of iBird Pro for as long as it works.
 
Member's gallery
A funny note with Merlin sound. I had it open and a bird flew over me so I took a burst of rapid shots with my new Z9. Merlin identified a slight shutter noise as a Cyrl Bunting, found around the Mediteranean Sea and I am in North Carolina. When birding I always confirm what Merlin says, it's getting better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top