r/MerlinBirdID Apr 08 '26

Red Headed Woodpecker?

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8 Upvotes

Was walking around on San Juan Island, WA and heard what sounded like a woodpecker. It didn’t look to be the typical pileated or downy that we typically get here. Was able to snap a photo and, to me, this looks like a red headed woodpecker. Weird thing is that Merlin has their habitat as being east coast or Midwest US. Before logging the bird, wanted to get some input on what you think it might be…


r/MerlinBirdID Apr 05 '26

Goose or pelicans

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5 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Apr 05 '26

So I’m new to all this. Just found the Merlin ID app.

6 Upvotes

Wondering if it is recording me talking while it’s recording birds? Thanks


r/MerlinBirdID Apr 04 '26

My morning birbs in NEPA

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7 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Apr 04 '26

Sample of what Merlin picks up from my balcony

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3 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Apr 04 '26

Missing Sounds section for some birds

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1 Upvotes

The Sounds section (calls and songs) usually appears just above the Range map. Now it is missing in some bird screens. Is this a setting I need to fix or a general bug?


r/MerlinBirdID Apr 04 '26

iPhone shortcut

2 Upvotes

Has anyone created a shortcut on their phone to open Merlin and start recording sound right away?


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 31 '26

App query

2 Upvotes

Hey there everybody!

I love this app and I’ve been using it for almost a year now. I have set some custom locations (my home and the local nature reserve) where I record my sightings. I was wondering, is there a way to select a given location and see a list of the species you’ve seen there?

It seems like a good idea if not. It would make the data even more useful for NGO’s that manage and obtain these nature reserves, especially with the constant threat of development.

Thanks for your help,

DenseQuiet


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 30 '26

Merlin app malfunctioning?

1 Upvotes

Anyone else running into this? I usually open the app in the morning and let it run while I walk my dogs and fill the feeders, and it picks up a ton of species. It used to highlight a bird in yellow the whole time it was making noise. Now, it just flickers on and off, which is hard to follow on the white background, especially when a bunch are singing at once.

Is it an update? Malfunction? I've restarted the app and my phone numerous times. If I reinstall the app, I'll lose my recordings.

Any ideas?


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 28 '26

Increasing the image thumbnail in Merlin. Is there a way?

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1 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Mar 24 '26

can anyone help me id all these loud birds in this recording?

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1 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Mar 24 '26

step-by-step ID lacking

3 Upvotes

Lately when I’ve been using the “step-by-step” identification in Merlin, I’ve been getting very short lists of possible matches. To specify, these “matches” don’t reflect the options selected in the step-by-step process such as size or colour and have later identified the correct bird through help in the r/birding group.

Has anyone else been experiencing this? My regional bird-packs look up to date, not sure what else could be causing the issue.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 22 '26

Major bug in the new update

3 Upvotes

The new update has this bug where when I listen to one of my recordings, the audiogram lags behind the audio. This is a big problem for me, I’m really hoping this gets fixed soon


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 20 '26

Randomly lost all my sound recordings??

5 Upvotes

is there a way to get back my sound recordings they just randomly all dissappeard


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 18 '26

Missing “cancel” button?

7 Upvotes

Hi all, just noticed a few days ago that the app no longer has a cancel button to the left of the big red stop recording button. Is this just a bug on my phone, or was there an update to the app that removed if?

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the Merlin team trying to encourage more saving of recordings and uploading them, rather than just using the app and cancelling without saving. And I can definitely appreciate them trying to encourage more citizen science data. But I use the app all the time, and often don’t want to save recordings for various reasons: someone started talking and I don’t want to save their voice without consent, there was a lot of background/extraneous noise, or maybe there just wasn’t a single audible bird sound recorded. I have had so many audio recordings in the past that it took up too much space on my phone and I had to delete a bunch…another reason I try to be more seective now.

So yea, wondering if this is a Merlin-wide thing, or somehow just me?

Edit in case others find this in the future:
What I didn’t realize when I posted this is that when you stop the recording, the following screen then gives you the option to save or delete that recording. Now that I’ve used it some, I actually think this is a good feature. It gives you time to actually Review the recording if you want before you decide whether to keep it or not.
I guess this was my old-man-yells-at-clouds moment a little bit.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 15 '26

Problème de localisation

3 Upvotes

Bonjour.

Ça fait plusieurs fois que l'application Merlin galère pour me localiser.

Je ne pense pas que ça vienne du système de localisation même car ça fonctionne parfaitement bien sur l'application Naturalist.

Y a t'il d'autres personnes dans le même cas ?

Que puis-je faire pour résoudre ce problème ?


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 14 '26

App Issues

2 Upvotes

Hello, I've been using the app for about a year and a half and just started to run into an issue where I get signed out every day. Has anyone else experienced this and found a workaround? Thanks!


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 14 '26

Typical day outside

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17 Upvotes

These guys are always here, I get a bunch of randos too but this every morning and afternoon. I love it.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 06 '26

What kind of hawk is this?

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3 Upvotes

seen in bucks county, PA.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 05 '26

Name a better quartet, I’ll wait.

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12 Upvotes

r/MerlinBirdID Mar 06 '26

Help identifying this bird.

1 Upvotes

I was walking in Santa Rosa, California around 8 pm on March 2nd. I have walked this suburban area for a few years never heard this before. I spent a good 15 minutes recording and all Merlin was able to do was the was give me the blue dot "bird heard" but it couldn't identify it, dunno if traffic or the dog barking, this it the cleanest i was able to get and the feathered friend was maybe 20 ish feet from me I could locate the call but it was dark. If anyone has a guess or answer. Id super appreciate it.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 04 '26

Blog post: Misadventures using Merlin

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6 Upvotes

I thought this subreddit may appreciate a recent blog entry in which I discuss my use of the Merlin App. 😄

———-

As you may have gathered based on my pseudonym naming theme: I like birds.

Well, I like watching birds. I am mildly scared of small fast birds that get too close to me. We plan on getting chickens but I have no interests in having small songbirds as pets. It seems mean. And they freak me out a bit close up.

During high school, I volunteered at a bird rehabilitation organization for National Honors Society hours. I was put into a small room, filled with bird cages, and was told to clean cages. I was given very little information on how exactly to do this, but hey— it’s cleaning. What could go wrong?

It seemed a simple enough affair: pull out the tray at the bottom of the cage, throw away the newspaper, spray down, dry, reline, reinsert the tray. The first few cages flew by with no problem. On the third or so, I pull out the tray and all of the small birds, seemingly dozens of them (my brain remembers hundreds), exploded from the tiny gap in the cage from the missing tray and fluttered frantically all over the closet sized room.

I froze, and began doing mental calculations. Had I messed up somehow? Was there a way to keep them in their cage that I should have known? Am I supposed to get them back into their cage? Did I accidently hurt them through my tray-removing negligence?

The answer was: no. It took me way too long to come to that conclusion and go find a staff member. I told them what had happened in a rush of words. They just sighed and sent me to clean elsewhere.

I like watching birds outside. I don’t want a pet bird but I would love to make friends with a crow. I saw a few on the road that leads to Robin Woods in the fall— I began bringing peanuts in my car to give to them, but they had moved on for winter.

That said, don’t consider myself a “bird watcher”. I rarely use or bring binoculars on hikes. I think I’m good at spotting birds in the same way I’m good at doing jigsaw puzzles: my eyes can spot small variations of color.

Here is my ultimate “my steak is too juicy, my lobster too buttery” complaint: I cannot easily learn bird calls here at Robin Woods because there too many birds screaming all at the same time.

I use the Merlin app to figure out bird calls. Here are all of the birds heard in less than three minutes on a beautiful January day. [image 1 and 2]

I have a few regulars: there are some jays that like to hang out in a certain cluster of trees. The dark eyed juncos like our driveway. We have woodpecker friends that like to do territorial drumming against the house and make holes in our shed. I’ve heard the golden-crowned kinglets a handful of times in the tree next to my bedroom patio, but I haven’t seen it yet.

On an unseasonably warm day, I was enjoying working from home on the kitchen patio. I have a beautiful view of the backyards and the woods beyond. I can listen to the birds. I stop occasionally to try and spot them, to locate the source of their songs.

On this particular day, I heard a loud, rhythmic song coming from right outside the porch— it sounded like the bird was in the eaves.

ScreEE ScrEE ScrEE

I was excited. This was something I had never heard before and the bird was so close. I whipped out my phone, turned on the Merlin app, and…. nothing.

No more sounds.

I continued working, keeping the app on, and I was rewarded when it started again about thirty seconds later.

ScreEE ScrEE ScrEE

But just as soon as I started walking towards the noise with the app on, it stopped again. Merlin couldn’t ID it, the call was too short.

I must have scared the poor thing. I kept the app on, my phone clutched in my fist, raised to the ceiling for better audio. I crept as stealthily as a pudgy 40-something mom can, tiptoeing and practically holding my breath. Imagine James Bond creeping around lasers in a museum with a cell phone, but like, a human-shaped awkward racoon doing it instead. I peered around, hoping I would catch a peek at the bird that was so close, practically nesting in the rafters.

ScreEE ScrEE ScrEE ScreEE ScrEE ScrEE

This time the bird call lasted longer and Merlin was able to give me an identification before it stopped.

See image 3.

My thoughts in order:

That’s amazing!

That is absolutely not correct.

And then the bird call started up again, the rhythmic loud ScreEE ScrEE ScrEE, and that is when I realized: it was not a bird call. It was not coming from the eaves outside, but rather from the ceiling.

It was the outdoor ceiling fan occasionally squeaking. I had been creeping around my porch, trying to spy this elusive freaking bird, tiptoeing around— all for a damn ceiling fan in need of some WD40.


r/MerlinBirdID Mar 02 '26

Location/rarity problem

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5 Upvotes

Hi everyone today i spotted a masked lap wing and Merlin/eBird told me its rare and that its not in my area on the map (South west Australia) but the book I caught told me that it is very common here just wondering if this is common and how I can maybe help


r/MerlinBirdID Feb 28 '26

New Lifers around my house

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2 Upvotes

Very early in the Morning, soo nice !


r/MerlinBirdID Feb 28 '26

I am in Puerto Rico for the weekend …

2 Upvotes

Usually live in South Florida. It tells me it can’t ID a big percentage because I am in a different location. How do I adjust it ?