Merlin asks you five questions about the bird you saw, then draws upon more than 750 million observations from eBird to show you the most likely species at your location and time of year.

Knowing garden birds by sight are beginner-level basics though, and the woodlands around me are another world, pierced by the calls and songs of feathered dwellers I can’t see and know little about.

Size doesn’t matter when it comes to the fighting spirit of the tiny merlin, a fierce parent and favoured hunting accessory ...

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 ...

Beginning birders are encouraged to use the Merlin Bird ID app to help determine the species they are encountering. In its first year, 1998, about 14,000 people in the U.S. and Canada participated ...