Merlin is amazing. I heard birds outside my new apartment and thought of them as nice background noise. Within days of installing Merlin, I could tell sparrows, cardinals and robins apart without seeing them. Whenever I heard a new bird, I'd grab my phone and open Merlin.

One day it sounded like a robin and a cardinal were having and argument while both simultaneously having a stroke. Merlin figured out it was a catbird, a relative of the mockingbird that learns the songs of other birds then strings pieces of them together in a disorganized song to impress the ladies. Basically, the male catbird who can sing the weirdest songs using the most species signals that he has "been around" for enough seasons to learn all those songs and therefore must have good genes the females want to pass on. It's mind blowing to learn all this about things that are going on outside your window.

[–] Shrugz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve been wanting to give this a try. It uses the same AI as Merlin but runs on a raspberryPI.

https://youtu.be/IM-F4sJ-5rc?si=0t6HGrwvHQz7OxCv

[–] BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Damn and I use PlantNet to ID plants and trees. We really are living in the future...

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Inaturalist is my goto

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Interesting! Downloading this.

[–] AzuleBlade@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

It's pretty great, there's also Cornell's companion citizen science app called eBird that you can use to count birds around you which is useful to ornithologists to track bird population density and migration patterns!

[–] Thatsalotofpotatoes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure this thread exists because of Merlin. Half the people I know seem to be on it

[–] sederx@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

Bro that shit is insanely good.

I got so many good pictures thank to that app