Listening to birdsong is a wonderful and relaxing way to enjoy nature. Since I was a child, I have always been impressed by these melodic communications without being able to recognize them (except for a few easily identifiable birds). So if your curiosity gets the better of you, you probably want to put a bird name to a song. We will show you how to identify the birds that make these sweet sounds.
Chances are you take your phone with you when you’re out walking in nature. Did you know it can be a surprisingly accurate bird identification tool? There’s a pretty awesome app that will turn you into a bird expert!
Identify a bird song with the Merlin Bird ID app
Available free of charge to all, Merlin Bird ID is an application made available by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a non-profit organization affiliated with Cornell University that focuses on the study of birds.
This application for Android et iOS is truly the Swiss army knife of the amateur ornithologist. It allows you to identify a bird from 5 simple questions, to recognize its song or even to make an identification from a photo.
When you launch the application, on its home screen you will find several options. "Start ID" allows you to identify a bird using a questionnaire and "Get Photo ID" from a photo. The option that interests us is "Sound ID" which allows you to identify a bird song.
A menu will appear with a few options. To immediately start listening to the birdsong around you, press the big green button with a microphone.
The application will immediately start listening and displaying the birds identified as you go on the screen. The bird that the application finds most likely will be highlighted in yellow.
Press the red stop button to stop listening and recording. You will then get a list of all the birds identified. You can click on each of them to get more information, but also listen to recordings of their song to compare it with what you have heard. Once you are sure you have found the right bird, click on "That's my bird!". Your search will then be saved on your free account (if you have created one).
Short video demo (in English) of the application to identify a bird song:
Before starting and to avoid overloading your phone with a database that is too large, the application will allow you to select the geographical areas that interest you. It will then locally download the data relating to the birds in these areas. For example, the area corresponding to Western Europe (including France and Germany) already weighs more than 600 MB! The big advantage of this system is that the application then works without any Internet connection! Ideal in case of a walk in the middle of nowhere!
In the end, the application seems really very precise and is able to identify a bird song very quickly, even in the middle of the hubbub of nature! It's very impressive! The application is in French even if some translations are currently missing!
