There’s Now a “Shazam” for Singing Birds!

An American company managed to develop a new app designed to identify birds through their singing, helping us identify aviary species we hear but rarely see.

The Merlin Bird ID app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a substantial database of notes and recordings collected by tens of thousands of scientists through the Lab’s eBird initiative. So far, the app can identify about 400 North American species, and this number will continue to expand.

The app listens to a bird in real-time and tells the user what they are hearing. Each “Sound ID” serves as a snapshot of a song. Like for pictures, they are compared for identification. If other apps like National Geographic’s iNaturalist help identify birds we see, Merlin Bird ID identifies those we hear, which could help save birds from harmful surroundings prone to the likes of pollution, insecticide, and microplastics.