Birda’s species guide covers all 11,000 species globally.
Birda’s bird sounds currently cover most species in North America, Europe and Southern Africa. Each bird sound is labelled by its sound type e.g. Song, Call, Alarm etc so that you can understand the behavioral aspects of each bird sound. Additional bird sounds are being added on an ongoing basis.
Birda’s species distribution maps have global coverage for each species and are fully vectorised so you can view each species map at any level of zoom. You will struggle to find an app with better bird distribution maps than Birda!
One of the tricky aspects of bird identification is knowing which species are often confused with one another and then finding the subtle differences that differentiate the species. Birda makes this process a whole lot easier by showing similar species in its species guide.
Birda’s users upload thousands of photos of the bird species they see. This in turn creates a huge resource of photos, all of which are integrated into the species guide. So rather than simply having a handful of species reference images to help you with your bird identification, you also have stacks of community images. Apart from being interesting to look at these images can also be a valuable resource for bird identification.
The Birda community post thousands of sightings every day, many of which have bird photos attached. These photos form a massive resource for other Birda users and are displayed in the species guide for the relevant species. These sightings are also a valuable resource for seeing where people are regularly seeing a species.
While we believe our HI Bird ID feature is the best for facilitating learning, we recognize the value of AI bird photo identification. Therefore, Birda has developed a state-of-the-art AI bird identification feature. Unlike other apps that perform identification in-app, Birda’s AI leverages advanced cloud-based infrastructure, resulting in significantly higher accuracy.
Birda does not currently have any sound identification features, however there is a plan to integrate this feature soon.
Merlin’s species guide has global coverage; however, the AI sound and photo ID only have partial coverage. Merlin Sound ID is able to identify just over 1,000 species, with 540 of those occurring in the United States and Canada, 602 in the Neotropics, 284 in the Western Palearctic, and 239 species in India. Merlin Photo ID is able to identify over 8,000 of the world’s 11,000 bird species.
Merlin’s species reference images are sourced from images submitted by eBird and images archived in the Macaulay Library. Being unisolated photographs of birds, the birds are generally not positioned and presented in a way typical of a species guide. There are also not always photos of the different genders and life stages. These issues make Merlin’s species reference images a little less useful for identification purposes.
Merlin’s species descriptions are limited to a short paragraph with no categories breaking down the description into useful sections. The lack of detailed information makes Merlin’s species descriptions of limited use for identification purposes and for learning more about any particular species.
Merlin has good bird sound coverage for most of the world’s regions. Each bird sound is labelled by its sound type, e.g., Song, Call, Alarm, etc. so that you can understand the behavioural aspects of each bird sound. Bird sounds on Merlin are also labelled with the location where they were recorded to give you examples of subtle differences between birds in different regions.
Merlin’s species distribution map has global coverage for each species. However, the maps are stored as images and are not vectorised as they are with Birda. This limits your ability to zoom into a map to get a more detailed view of a species’ distribution.
Merlin’s species guide does not include any species-based fun facts, which limits the app from a learning and engagement perspective.
Merlin’s species guide does not include any similar species information. Differentiating between different species is a really critical part of bird identification so this really limits the bird identification utility of Merlin’s species guide.
eBird’s users upload thousands of photos of the bird species they see. This creates a huge resource of photos however, apart from the reference images, none of these images are integrated into Merlin’s species guide.
As with photos, eBird’s users upload thousands of videos of the bird species they see. This creates a huge resource of photos however, none of these images are integrated into Merlin’s species guide.
Unfortunately, Merlin does not support sharing sightings within the app, so you cannot see any sighting data from the Merlin community.
Merlin’s AI photo identification model has been trained to identify around 8,000 species from all over the world. The model can be accurate for more common species (where Cornell has lots of training data) however as with most AI, it is not flawless and can make some pretty obvious mistakes. Not having any HI (human intelligence) in the feature is what lets is down as there is no substitute for an expert determining the real identification. From a learning perspective, just being told the species of bird in a photo does not help you learn as well as with HI-based identification as people are much better at learning when there is a discussion around the identification.
Merlin’s Sound ID is able to identify just over 1,000 species with 540 of those being species occurring in the United States & Canada, 602 in the Neotropics, 284 in the Western Paleartic and 239 species in India. As with their Photo ID feature, AI-based bird sound identification is not flawless can can regularly suggest species that are just plain wrong. The feature would benefit from human input especially where the AI model is suggesting really unlikely species.
The Audubon Bird Guide covers over 800 species of North American birds.
The Audubon app includes over 3,000 high-quality species photos in its field guide. While the photos are generally decent quality, they are unisolated photos and the birds are in a variety of inconsistent positions which feel lower quality compared to bird illustrations or isolated photos of birds.
The Audubon app includes detailed descriptions, provided by leading North American bird expert Kenn Kaufman. The description covers general aspects of each species, song & calls, range, conservation status, habitat, feeding behaviour, diet, nesting, eggs and more. These detailed descriptions are a fantastic way to learn more about birds and all the subtle aspects that help to improve your bird identification skills.
The app includes over eight hours of audio clips featuring the bird sounds of different bird species, allowing users to learn and identify birds by sound. The bird sounds are categorised into various types such as songs, calls which provides excellent coverage for learning and identification.
It features multi-season range maps for each species, helping users understand migration patterns and seasonal changes in bird distribution.
There is unfortunately not a specific “fun facts” section in the Audubon app however the detailed species descriptions and articles within the app do sometimes contain intriguing and lesser-known information about bird behaviours and traits.
Audubon’s field guide has a section on similar species, which helps users distinguish between similar species by comparing physical characteristics. This feature is a great resource for identification, especially for similar-looking species.
Apart from the standard species reference images, the Audubon app does not show images posted by other users of the app.
The Audubon app does not show any video content in the app.
Audubons hotspot feature, within its species guide, shows a map with pins for every sighting of a species. This is a useful resource when you are trying to find out where people are currently seeing a specific species.
While the app has species reference photos, it does feature a Photo ID system akin to automatic recognition from photos, instead focusing on manual entry criteria for bird identification.
The app provides extensive audio resources but does not list an automatic Sound ID feature. Users can manually match bird calls to sounds in the database to identify species.
The Sibley app covers over 930 North American bird species, each with detailed descriptions and distribution maps.
The Sibley app features detailed artwork from David Sibley’s Guide to Birds Second Edition, which is an excellent resource to help users identify different bird species through visual comparison. There unfortunately no photographic reference images for the species which makes it difficult to see subtle details that may be missing from illustrations.
Each bird species in the Sibley app is accompanied by thorough descriptions that include a general description, information about their size and weight, sounds, status and habitat, subspecies, taxonomic notes, the species common name in French and Spanish and the species banding code.
The app includes over 2700 calls and songs covering most species, which is a valuable tool for identification and learning about birds’ vocal behaviours.
Detailed range maps are available for each species and these are categoried into year-round, summer, winter, migration and rare distributions. These maps are static images, so unlike Birda’s vectored maps, they cannot be zoomed in for detailed viewing.
While the Sibley app does not specifically contain a “Fun Facts” section for each species, the species guide descriptions do contain some interesting and lesser-known facts about the birds.
The Sibley app includes a similar species section that shows similar species for side-by-side comparisons, helping users distinguish between species that might look alike. This feature however seems to be generated by other species sharing the same species family which means that some species in the list may look nothing like the species you are looking at. This is a pity as it erodes the value of the Sibleys similar species feature.
Unfortunately, the Sibley Birds 2nd Edition app does not include community photos. Photographs of birds are an important resource for bird identification, so their absence is unfortunate.
The Sibley app does not provide videos; it is focused on still images and audio files for bird identification and learning. As with bird photos, video of birds is also an important resource for bird identification so it is a pity to see that they are missing from the app.
While the Sibley app has basic logging functionality, sightings cannot be shared with other users.
The app does not currently support identification through users’ photos. It primarily relies on its detailed illustrations and descriptions for species identification.
While the app includes an extensive catalogue of bird calls and songs, the app does not support an AI-based sound ID feature that automatically identifies birds by sound. Users must manually compare sounds within the app to identify species.
