I second Dave’s call for caution with Merlin, and remind the list of Greg’s post from Friday about this topic. While Merlin does accurately ID many species, I have had many misidentifications. Recently watched a Blue Jay doing a Red-shouldered Hawk call and Merlin repeatedly identified the bird as a Red-shouldered Hawk. The Jay was very convincing, but clearly still a Jay. And yesterday I watched the Lawrence’s Warbler doing the Blue-winged Warbler call and tried Merlin, which identified it as a Blue-winged. And I would bet that when the bird switches his call to Golden-winged Warbler, Merlin would ID a Golden-winged. Both of those IDs are wrong. Always track down and confirm the bird or be familiar enough with the songs to make your own decision vs. letting Merlin make the ID. And try to become familiar with the species that can create confusion. Last thing: You can eliminate some (emphasis on some!) of the outrageous suggestions by making sure that Merlin has access to your location services. Chuck Imbergamo CT Birds Moderator Madison > On May 18, 2022, at 6:21 AM, David Provencher via CTBirds <ctbirds@lists.ctbirding.org> wrote: > Despite having no time to bird this year I've been intrigued by the > discussion of the efficacy of the Merlin app for identifying birds by > sound. So leaving work this morning at 5:00 a.m. I ran a couple of test > runs in the parking lot at millstone station in Waterford. And then I ran > several test runs in my yard at home around 5:30 a.m. every single run that > I did came up with false positives. Some of the false positives identified > were Cape May warbler, brown thrasher repeatedly, Summer tanager, mourning > warbler, and misidentification of more common birds such as catbird being > called veery. This is a very intriguing app and a useful one. Certainly it > will improve, but for the moment users need to be cautious, particularly > for uncommon or rare species for the location species. I suspect brown > thrasher is getting identified in cases where there are American robins > singing near one another and the combined sonogram of the two similar songs > slightly offset is resulting in an analysis of a mimid such as brown > thrasher. Not sure of course. Despite the false positives I had a good deal > of fun listening as bird call happened and watching the app for response. > One interesting thing I did Note was several misses of birds that were > singing rather loudly near me. A consistent miss was Rose-breasted Grisbeak > > Dave Proven her > Preston > > Dave Provencher > > CTBirds, a service of Connecticut Ornithological Association - Bringing birders together statewide. Please support COA: https://www.ctbirding.org/join-us/ > CTBirds is for the discussion of birds and birding in Connecticut. For list rules and subscription information visit: https://www.ctbirding.org/birds-birding/ct-birds-email-list/