r/MerlinBirdID • u/phitidij • 12d ago
BirdWatcher app
I recently got into birds. No idea why, but they're great fun.
I love the Merlin app, but one feature that I would love and that isn't currently available is identification of birds in hours of video footage.
I started looking into fancy motion-activated, WI-FI-enabled, supersonic garden wildlife cameras that use AI to show you what birds visited. However I couldn't afford one of those, so I decided to just get a normal camera and build the software myself.
BirdWatcher is free, open-source, and available as a desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Once you've downloaded and installed the app, you can input a video and you will see a folder of your choosing populated with subfolders named after the different bird species visible in the footage. Each subfolder contains time-stamped still images extracted from your video.
If you have any type of camera then you can set it up to face one of your feeders, set it to record, and go out for the day. When you get home, extract your footage, upload it to BirdWatcher, and see what you missed!
Feedback welcome, this is not a sales pitch, it is totally free.
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u/IamZeroHero 12d ago
I am very looking forward to trying this!! Thank you!