3 ms·
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 t
by 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 agoIt does make mistakes with mockingbirds in practice.
- joshuahedlund 1y agoI 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 agoSeek 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.)