alt Hacker NewsIn general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it.
There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.
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I have a bunch of Blue Jays around my house and it turns out they are so good at imitating a specific hawk species(blanking on its name) that Merlin actually reports it as the hawk! I went and listened to real recordings of that hawks call and I couldn't tell it apart from the Jays imitation call.
Now, I know it's technically possible it was a real id, but Im pretty sure the bald eagle it detected was actually one of the kids down the street running around screaming lol
The only errors I've seen it make with common birds in the UK are also with finches - specifically with the greenfinch's "at rest" twitter, which it consistently mistakes for a goldfinch.
The two are visually distinctive but, in Merlin's defence, I can't tell them apart by ear either!
It definitely has trouble with similar species sometimes — I've noticed it recently with crows and warblers. But it does a great job generally and direct observation of the bird usually clears up the confusion.