Column: Why you shouldn’t rely on this popular birding tool
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 13, 2026
Merlin is the bird identification app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Download it onto a smartphone, and you’ve got a free bird expert in your pocket. It can identify many birds by sight and sound. It can also misidentify them. Merlin is frequently right and infrequently wrong. It’s a good tool for identifying bird songs, as long as you treat its results as suggestions, not gospel. There’s no substitute for learning bird songs yourself. Nonetheless, I highly recommend Merlin for inexperienced birders, if it’s used as a tool and you understand its limitations. ~ Bob Duchesne