This free app is like Shazam for bird calls

It’s spring, and nature is pulling me away from my computer as I write this. The sun is shining, the world is warming up, and the birds are chirping away.

And that got me thinking: What if a smartphone app could translate all those chirps for us?

No, I’m not talking about an app that will translate bird sounds to human speech (although that would be neat). Rather, the app we’re about to go over tells you what specific species is making any bird sound around you—kind of like Shazam, only for nature. All you have to do is hold up your phone and press one button.

It’s an app I’ve personally used a bunch over the years and happily rediscovered this year. It’s especially nice when traveling—or if you’ve moved and you’re not sure which birds are in your area.

One way or another, if you’re hearing chirping and you aren’t sure what animal is responsible, you’re in for a treat.

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Animal intelligence—Shazam style

Ready to fly into uncharted nature territory?

➜ The app you need is called ​Merlin Bird ID​, and it’s created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. It’s completely free, and it can work both online and off. You don’t even need to create an account.

To get started, install ​the free Merlin app for Android from Google Play​, or ​get the iPhone version from the Apple App Store​.

While the app is free, you will be asked to provide an email address to sign up to the university’s newsletter before you can use it. (You can unsubscribe whenever you like, of course—and it appears you can enter any email address, too, even if it maybe isn’t associated with your primary personal inbox.)

After going through a few screens of setup, you’ll get to the core part of the app—a big green microphone button with “Sound ID” on it.

Tap the button, and Merlin will start recording audio from your phone’s microphone. If there are audible bird sounds in the area, it’ll then attempt to compare those to bird calls in its database and tell you which exact bird is behind them.

It works really well, and it’ll keep recording and list multiple bird species if more than one creature is making noise around you. You can tap each bird species for more information, too.

It really is that simple—but there’s more you can do, if you’re so inspired. For example, you can replay your recordings later so you can get to know all the birds you encountered. And, you can download “offline birds” for various regions so you can even identify birds if you’re off in the wilderness and don’t have an active data connection.

That’s all—just a free app provided by a university that works well and has no ads or other asterisks. It’s earned itself an underground cult following for a reason.

• Merlin is available as a native app for both ​​Android and ​iOS.
• It’s completely free—no catches.
• And it doesn’t sell or share your data. It’s created by a science lab at a university.

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