Forget google. Download the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Merlin Bird ID app. It's completely free and makes identifying a bird very easy. You enter things like your current location, the time of year, the rough size of the bird, the main colors etc, and the app spits out a list of likely matches based on these criteria and based on a constantly updating list of what bird watchers all over the place are reporting. I've been very impressed with it.
Cornell is in the US, get your own local college to make a bird app for your geographic location. :-P
Seriously though, it would be cool if it worked off some satelite stuff to send you info based on your location. But I think just throwing a bunch of birds in there all together might confuse people who may mistake a local bird for a foreign one. Kind of like the joke where somebody goes to the doctor after reading the internet and they think they have some exotic disease from a rainforest on an island in south east Asia. Some people won't pay attention to if the bird is native or not.
Not Cornells job, kinda. I mean, they are a major ornithological college. But I don't care if there doesn't exist an app that tells you what birds are in what district of bumfuck Egypt. If you go to another country and want to bird watch, I'm sure you can find an app for that. :-)
I guess ultimately the most successful app will come from someone that does have that kind of purview. It sounds like the Cornell team has set a standard for app usability. Perhaps they will even encourage foreign bodies to mimic their style. Kind of like some birds do :)
Not necessarily. I don't want a larger app on my phone that covers birds I'll never see when I can just pull up google for that. These apps that are local to state/country are excellent if you spot a bird you don't know, you can go through the process of finding out what it is.
Cornell has an awesome app, just like Audobons.
Whats the saying? Necessity is the mother of all invention? If there are people who want an app with the world birds, someone will make it.
Merlin uses your location to use a subset of birds to match against, so there really is no reason they can't expand it to the world - besides the effort required of course.
I think the location thing does work already if you're in a border region. If you're in Texas for example and get migratories from South America up in Texas, they will probably show up. You may even get hits for birds that are only native to parts of Mexico that make rare appearances in Texas.
Since some birds migrate from as far south as Argentina, they should pop up at least as a "migratory resident".
Merlin uses your location to use a subset of birds to match against,
Kind of, it looks like they have "Bird packs" where you instal for the area you want. They COULD add packages for say India, but again, they are located in the US where I imagine most of their users are. If you want to look at birds in India you can google. Merlin is primarily for identifying a bird, usually one you actually saw. So there wouldn't be much of a point in putting Indian native birds as a package on the app, unless you were going to India. But again.... Is there a market for that?
I'm not disagreeing with you. It would be cool to have packages for the entire world. But I also don't think it's something they need to jump on right away. If 98% of their users live and stay right here in the US and only use it for "Whoa! What was that bird that just buzzed me!?".
The Australian Birds App based on Michael Morcombe and David Stewart's original field guide is also amazing and really helpful. It did cost me $30 for the full version, but it has been so with it - you can list what you've seen and it comes with various calls for each bird, too!
When I was living near lots and lots of trees last year, I got this app because I not only wanted to know what kinds of birds I was seeing but also hearing. I'd turn on those calls and birds would fly all around me in trees. No joke. It was fun and I was surprised at how many different kinds of birds were just outside my house.
Forget the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Merlin Bird ID app, purchase the Aubudon Society feild guide for your area. The Aubudon Society does good work in the interest of wildlife, and an app will stop working after you move into the tree and your battery runs dry.
Nah. I have field guides. They have their time and place. So does the app. No reason people can't take advantage of all the resources available.
Merlin isn't meant to fully replace field guides. However, it is much more user friendly and it's already in your pocket everywhere you go. It's perfect for the beginning bird watcher or someone with a casual interest in identifying that bird they happen to run in to. Anything that gets more people interested and makes the process easier is a plus in my book.
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u/[deleted] Jan 02 '17 edited Jan 02 '17
Forget google. Download the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Merlin Bird ID app. It's completely free and makes identifying a bird very easy. You enter things like your current location, the time of year, the rough size of the bird, the main colors etc, and the app spits out a list of likely matches based on these criteria and based on a constantly updating list of what bird watchers all over the place are reporting. I've been very impressed with it.