Interesting article on Merlin

Jay Pitocchelli

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Oct 27, 2025, 10:23:44 AM (11 days ago) Oct 27

to Maine birds

Recent article comparing Merlin to human observers - good read.

https://academic.oup.com/condor/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ornithapp/duaf049/8222742?login=false

Should be open access

Dr. Jay Pitocchelli, Professor Emeritus
Biology Department
Saint Anselm College
Manchester, NH 03102

Blog: http://mourningwarbler.blogspot.com/

chr...@myfairpoint.net

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Oct 27, 2025, 4:03:37 PM (10 days ago) Oct 27

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The results don't surprise me. I've had Merlin lie to me on a number of occasions, and fail to pick up a bird close by that I can hear clearly. This seems to be especially true of Brown Thrasher. The same thing happened to me with a Bullocks Oriole last Spring in New Mexico.

Nevertheless, it's still a useful tool.

Wally S.

Sean S

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Oct 27, 2025, 4:36:18 PM (10 days ago) Oct 27

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My observations have been that when it was first rolled out, the accuracy was good although it would sometimes include non-US occurring and very unlikely species as possible ID's. Then it got better and for a while (sorry, I have no dates) it was working extremely well, with high accuracy. I don't know if somewhere along the line the data set took in a bunch of false ID's from eBird submissions by birders misidentifying relatively common, therefore non-flagged species (so these ID's just weren't scrutinized) but a couple of years ago its results started to get shaky at times. This hypothesis could be completely wrong as I don't know Merlin's inner workings. However, I can say that since it implemented location-based ID's it's often, but not always been spotty and unreliable. Just last week it failed to recognize a loud and obvious Carolina Wren, and this is one of many missed and sometimes completely off-base ID's that have been happening over the past year or more. I would also say that being a bit too strict about individual locations (counties, etc.) has overall undermined rather than strengthened its capabilities. To give an example, if something rare but not impossible (say, a Lark Sparrow) showed up in my neck of the woods, I highly doubt that it would be recognized even with a good recording. Others may of course have completely different takes and results. I'm still using it because its ID capability currently seems fair to pretty good to me.