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Merlin is an extremely radical development -- the biggest since I started birding 35 years ago! It is a huge change to be able to get quick IDs on calls and son

Merlin is an extremely radical development -- the biggest since I started birding 35 years ago! It is a huge change to be able to get quick IDs on calls and songs, unless you are already very expert on the bird vocalisations in an area. From what I've seen so far, it works very well in North America (tested on Eastern deciduous forest birds), and well but not quite as well in Portugal. It will be a good excuse/motivation to do some birding in other countries (e.g. South America) when the models are trained well on those species: the fact that individual locations in the tropics have larger species lists (making ID harder in general) and that vocalisations are a large part of tropical forest birding make it pretty exciting to have it working there. And I'm also looking forward to the app evolving a bit, e.g. confidence scores, labeled sonograms, etc.

madaxe_again 4y ago
I’ve been using Cornell’s BirdNET in Portugal and it’s proven very accurate, even when it’s a euphonic riot of overlapping song - I use inaturalist for photo identification of everything and anything. I’d love it if inaturalist brought in BirdNET or similar - afaik their sound identification is currently driven by humans.
- Myrmornis 4y ago
  Hi! OK that's good to hear. In Portugal it came up with false positive detections of Hawfinch and Little Owl. Both those species were present in the area (saw them!), but if you think about Hawfinch in particular, it has such a nondescript vocalisation (a quiet, short monosyllable) that it is really easy to imagine that it could be spuriously identified by the neural network (after being allowed as an ID by a prior/filter based on the species plausible in that geographic area at that time of year). I don't mean to sound like I know about the details of their neural net and classification algorithms, or like I know how to do better, but I do suspect that it will improve with some tuning to essentially make it demand stronger evidence for a call like Hawfinch. Little Owl is a bit more distinctive, but I don't really think one was calling when it said it was. I think it also spuriously identified Blue Rock Thrush, but maybe it was right and we just failed to hear/see one! The habitat seemed right. I haven't seen as many misidentifications in Eastern US (a couple of days ago I did think it said Kentucky Warbler for an Ovenbird).
  - tiagod 4y ago
    I've had the same issue with little owl in Portugal (just yesterday). I believe it had to do with missing songs and cicada interference in my case.
- tiagod 4y ago
  For photo identification of plants, I've found Plant@net to be amazing (in Portugal)

madaxe_again 4y ago

I’ve been using Cornell’s BirdNET in Portugal and it’s proven very accurate, even when it’s a euphonic riot of overlapping song - I use inaturalist for photo identification of everything and anything. I’d love it if inaturalist brought in BirdNET or similar - afaik their sound identification is currently driven by humans.

Myrmornis 4y ago
Hi! OK that's good to hear. In Portugal it came up with false positive detections of Hawfinch and Little Owl. Both those species were present in the area (saw them!), but if you think about Hawfinch in particular, it has such a nondescript vocalisation (a quiet, short monosyllable) that it is really easy to imagine that it could be spuriously identified by the neural network (after being allowed as an ID by a prior/filter based on the species plausible in that geographic area at that time of year). I don't mean to sound like I know about the details of their neural net and classification algorithms, or like I know how to do better, but I do suspect that it will improve with some tuning to essentially make it demand stronger evidence for a call like Hawfinch. Little Owl is a bit more distinctive, but I don't really think one was calling when it said it was. I think it also spuriously identified Blue Rock Thrush, but maybe it was right and we just failed to hear/see one! The habitat seemed right. I haven't seen as many misidentifications in Eastern US (a couple of days ago I did think it said Kentucky Warbler for an Ovenbird).
- tiagod 4y ago
  I've had the same issue with little owl in Portugal (just yesterday). I believe it had to do with missing songs and cicada interference in my case.
tiagod 4y ago
For photo identification of plants, I've found Plant@net to be amazing (in Portugal)