Free Bird

This birding app goes cheap, cheap!

The various digital birding apps available provide great resources for both professional birders and people who are simply trying to figure out what bird they just saw. With its latest app, known as Merlin, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has the latter group in mind.

Merlin is a free app. Drawing from the eBird database, it guides people through the identification process and makes suggestions based on factors like size and when and where the bird was seen. Watch the video below to get an idea of how it works:



Merlin doesn't include all the bird species in North America, and it is only available through Apple's App Store for now, but an Android version is coming, and Merlin looks like a great, free option for those who are getting started with bird identification. For more information, click here.

With Merlin, the next time you hear a cheep, you've got a no-cost, handy way of figuring out what made it.