Sitting in the hospital garden, we were able to see the Redwing, which we fed, but couldn’t see the small birds. Merlin identified them as Goldfinches, lovely variable song, but in a group how noisy they can be. But beautiful.
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Today we heard a cuckoo on another area of heathland near Guildford. Another walker said that last year there were four different male cuckoos identified by the expert birders in that one area of about ten square miles.
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Merlin was struggling today in Abu Dhabi. Lots of birds, very little identified.
I presume you have installed the regional database?
Indeed, you do have to do that. And have location approved for access by Merlin.
Although, having scrolled through the available bird packs, I’m not sure there is one specific to that region
“Birds of the Middle East”?
Ah yes…….that one, that I scrolled over several times…….Duh!
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Not initially, but after it picked up a few, but im sure not all. But most, id never heard of!
When here, " middle east" is what it suggested.
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Yesterday picked up a spotted spotted flycatcher from the garden.
Last year it was rare, but not this year.
This morning picked up a tree creeper.
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Wonderful, I keep getting Robins and Goldfinches, but that is beautiful as well.
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I also picked up a house martin yesterday for the first time this year. Also a yellow hammer, which I believe are not common nowadays.
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Merlin is a great app but not always totally accurate. Sitting in my inland Somerset garden last night, it picked up 25 bird species, mostly plausible but also included: gadwall, ring necked plover, common(?) nightingale, and a European serin!
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At home the app always ignores the gulls. On a recent walk along a part of the Bristol Bath railpath, I could see a manmade lake, ducks, geese, gulls and heron, none of them reported.
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I started using the app this year
32 species so far
Some in the Garden in N Derbyshire , some at the local gravel pits , some in the Welsh valleys on holiday
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I think it’s really quite dependent on a decent internet connection - cellular coverage is crap in the garden where it fails to detect much at all.
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Yes, i have also noticed a few obvious identification errors. It reported common sandpiper just recently near our home even though we are miles from any standing water. The app also sometimes fails to identify birdsong that I can clearly hear myself. I guess this must be down to some combination of hardware and software issues - perhaps not surprising when you consider what the phone/app are doing to identify birds so quickly.
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I find the obvious errors tend to occur when there is a lot of simultaneous singing from different birds - it may be that some of the tones combine to mimic a different call.
I also find that the app often fails to respond to birdsong I can clearly hear (and I am in my 70s!). My wife and I sometimes go for walks with both our phones running Merlin - one phone will often pick up a call when the other doesn’t when we are side by side. They are both different models of Samsung but it varies as to which one gets it.
Having said all that, I still think it’s a great app and wouldn’t be without it.
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