download the new version for android The Hand of Merlin

Originally launched in 2014, early versions of the app could ID 400 North American species.

The app allows users to identify birds by a picture, or by songs and calls, and can create a digital scrapbook of the birds you discover. The Merlin Bird ID app, first hatched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, can help birders identify more than 6,000 species on six continents by look or song. “So, Merlin was all about helping you figure out what’s that bird I’m seeing in a quick and simple way.” Barry and her team at Cornell have given all of humankind a chance at redemption – and it’s sitting in the palm of our hands, quite literally.īarry said, “The idea for this app came from just wanting to help people answer the simple question, what’s that bird I’m seeing? Because you might be outside, or you look in the backyard and you’re like, Hey, what is that? And we wanted Merlin to be able to give a list of possibilities without having to go back to a field guide, where maybe if you don’t even have a bird book, and if you do have a bird book, there’s all these choices, and you might not even know where to start. And so, that’s a really critical warning sign for us right now.”īut hope is not lost. Right now, all the indicators are pointing to bird populations declining. “They’re helping us understand the health of the planet. “Birds are really the canaries in the coal mine in a lot of ways,” she said. “Birds are really important because they are indicators of environmental health basically, what’s good for birds is good for humans,” said Jesse Barry, program manager of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. In this century alone, we’ve lost animals by sea (such as the smooth handfish), by land (the Northern white rhinoceros), and, yes, by air (the ivory-billed woodpecker), all driven to extinction.

Today, if a species goes extinct, chances we as humans had something to do with it.

Scientific evidence suggests dinosaurs met their extinction through asteroid impact. ▶ Watch Video: What’s that bird? Merlin Bird ID app works magic Business & Finance Click to expand menu.

Download the new version for android The Hand of Merlin