The Merlin Bird ID app used artificial intelligence to analyze a phone's live audio and detected a nearby scarlet tanager, allowing the hiker to locate and record the sighting. The app offers real-time audio identification and a gamified "life list" that encourages exploratory birding, producing unexpected finds from local woods to distant countries. The user base broadened from retired and avid birders to many 20- and 30-year-olds sharing discoveries on social media. The app sometimes misidentifies complex mimicry, such as mockingbirds, but still helps casual users, students, and even celebrities discover and document birds.
I didn't notice the scarlet tanager until the alert appeared on my phone: "Merlin heard a new bird!"Despite its brilliant plumage - jet-black wings on a crimson body - the songbird can be a hard one to spot in a forest because it prefers to stay high in the canopy. It sounds a little like a robin to an untrained ear.But the free Merlin Bird ID app detected a scarlet tanager was likely nearby by using artificial intelligence to analyze my phone's live sound recording.
Like a real-world version of Pokémon Go, a gotta-catch-'em-all drive to add to my Merlin list has helped me find a great kiskadee in Mexico and a rusty-cheeked scimitar-babbler in the Himalayas. But sometimes the greatest revelations are close to home, as more AI nature app users are starting to discover."Our stereotypical demographic five years ago would have been retired people and already-avid birders," said the Merlin app's manager, Drew Weber, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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