I'm REALLY excited about a new app from Cornell that lets you put a photograph of a bird into the program, mark the bill tip, eye, and tail tip and (usually) get a 1-3 set of possibilities. So far it is only for 400 birds but will get good at more and more birds. It is called
Merlin Photo ID Beta.
I had a bird come in and sing that was pretty far away and I got an image of a shape/pose like a Bell's vireo but I saw a yellow throat. I didn't recognize the song either. I was flummoxed and ended up asking for and ID on the Facebook group,
The Great Backyard Bird Count. Several of the group told me it was a house wren. I stuck it in Merlin - I just go to the webpage so pictures and app are all done on my laptop - and this is the result:
Whoo Hoo! Now I can't wait for them to get all those less common or hard-to-ID birds included. I also got an dark morph Swainson's hawk identified from a poorly lit and not very sharp picture of the bird at a distance.
