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> I’ve never seen Merlin’s Sound ID produce an obviously-wrong identification Well, good luck identifying mockingbirds, lol. But that's a tricky case. Anyway,

by shmerl 1y ago

> I’ve never seen Merlin’s Sound ID produce an obviously-wrong identification Well, good luck identifying mockingbirds, lol. But that's a tricky case. Anyway, it's a nice way to use AI, unlike so many others that pop up lately. I wish they'd open source it all though, especially if they are getting help from volunteers.

joshuahedlund 1y ago
As a heavy user of Merlin, it definitely isn’t perfect - especially with all the mimic birds - to the point that there are complaints about beginners polluting the citizen science database with erroneous IDs from Merlin. But it’s very very good.
- shmerl 1y ago
  Yeah, it's generally pretty accurate.
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Merlin generally gets Mockingbirds correct which is part of it's magic. Mockingbirds do a minimum of three repeats of any particular sound before moving onto the next. So the songs are done more times in a row than the real species would and then immediately it turns into a Robin (or something else). I'm sure there's subtle audio differences between a mockingbird and the real thing too that Merlin can detect. A feature I'd love would be if Merlin told you the call the bird was making rather than just the bird ID. eg. "Blue Jay mimicking a Red Shouldered Hawk" would be a cool bit of info it could give since it really does catch the mimics out really well. It currently just says "Blue Jay" when it hears a blue jay trying to be a red shouldered hawk.
- shmerl 1y ago
  It does make mistakes with mockingbirds in practice.
- joshuahedlund 1y ago
  I have stared at a Blue Jay mimicking while Merlin repeatedly labeled it Red-Shouldered Hawk. I’ve seen it pop up a bunch of suspicious one-offs around a mockingbird as well (same with Gray Catbird, another mimic). But I agree with you that it gets those things correct most of the time and it also seems to be improving over time.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Seek by iNaturalist has the same problem: if you wiggle your camera around enough, it will give you a species identification. But that species identification will be spurious. It's not reliable at all. Pointing this out on HN has sometimes resulted in a lot of upvotes and sometimes in a lot of downvotes. I don't know why. In all cases, Seek identifications are unlikely to be correct. (I also got one response saying I was wrong to try to tar iNaturalist by association with the unaffiliated app "Seek by iNaturalist". As the name of the app suggests, they are not in fact unaffiliated.)

by shmerl 1y ago

joshuahedlund 1y ago

As a heavy user of Merlin, it definitely isn’t perfect - especially with all the mimic birds - to the point that there are complaints about beginners polluting the citizen science database with erroneous IDs from Merlin. But it’s very very good.

shmerl 1y ago
Yeah, it's generally pretty accurate.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

Merlin generally gets Mockingbirds correct which is part of it's magic. Mockingbirds do a minimum of three repeats of any particular sound before moving onto the next. So the songs are done more times in a row than the real species would and then immediately it turns into a Robin (or something else). I'm sure there's subtle audio differences between a mockingbird and the real thing too that Merlin can detect. A feature I'd love would be if Merlin told you the call the bird was making rather than just the bird ID. eg. "Blue Jay mimicking a Red Shouldered Hawk" would be a cool bit of info it could give since it really does catch the mimics out really well. It currently just says "Blue Jay" when it hears a blue jay trying to be a red shouldered hawk.

shmerl 1y ago
It does make mistakes with mockingbirds in practice.
joshuahedlund 1y ago
I have stared at a Blue Jay mimicking while Merlin repeatedly labeled it Red-Shouldered Hawk. I’ve seen it pop up a bunch of suspicious one-offs around a mockingbird as well (same with Gray Catbird, another mimic). But I agree with you that it gets those things correct most of the time and it also seems to be improving over time.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Seek by iNaturalist has the same problem: if you wiggle your camera around enough, it will give you a species identification. But that species identification will be spurious. It's not reliable at all. Pointing this out on HN has sometimes resulted in a lot of upvotes and sometimes in a lot of downvotes. I don't know why. In all cases, Seek identifications are unlikely to be correct. (I also got one response saying I was wrong to try to tar iNaturalist by association with the unaffiliated app "Seek by iNaturalist". As the name of the app suggests, they are not in fact unaffiliated.)