Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology is an app by Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the Education category, listed since at least March 2021. It includes native code for x86 32-bit, x86 64-bit, ARM 32-bit, ARM 64-bit and MIPS, so it runs on practically every phone.
It asks for 13 permissions, 6 of them sensitive, including precise location, camera and approximate location.
What's new in v1.5
New: eBird Life List integration
We are excited to announce the new eBird Life List integration in Merlin! Sign in with your Cornell Lab account to quickly view your world life list of species you have submitted to eBird.org.
This is the first step to being able to fully create and manage your life list in Merlin. Sign up for a free account through the app, and submit your sightings at eBird.org or with the eBird Mobile app to see your list in Merlin grow.
Description
From the listing uploaded by “appupdater”.
What's that bird? Merlin Bird ID helps you solve the mystery in 5 questions, or with a photo of a bird.
First, Merlin asks you a few simple questions. Then, almost like magic, it reveals the list of birds that best match your description. Pick your bird, then delve into more photos, sounds, and ID tips about your bird!
If you have a photo, Merlin can help there as well. Take a photo, choose from your camera roll, or snap the viewfinder of your zoom camera, and Merlin's powerful AI will suggest an identification almost instantly.
Merlin is fun and easy to use—whether you’re curious about a bird you’ve seen once, trying to identify every bird that comes to your feeder, or planning a birding trip to a new country. The answers are waiting for you with this free field guide app from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Features
• Created for beginning and intermediate bird watchers, Merlin identifies the 2,000+ most common bird species of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and Europe.
• Merlin can identify a photo using powerful computer vision algorithms. Select your photo, tell Merlin where and when you took it, and you'll see a short list of suggested identifications.
• Intelligent results. No more scanning through hundreds of possibilities! Merlin shows the birds near you that fit your description.
• Customized location and date tools generate best answers for your neighborhood and time of year.
• Bird packs available for United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Central America, with more coming soon.
• Explore birds by location and date with a list of species seen in the area.
• Powered by eBird to deliver the most accurate results based on millions of sightings from bird watchers across North America.
• Enjoy more than 15,000 photos of birds, including males, females, and juveniles.
• Learn ID tips from Cornell Lab of Ornithology experts.
• Listen to beautiful bird sounds, including songs and calls for each species with the included Audio Essential Set from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
• It’s all free! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s goal is to help you and millions of others to learn about birds.
Merlin is the most advanced bird guide app available, and is expanding to new regions of the world.
••• Bird Packs •••
Merlin Bird ID currently includes bird identification help for the United States with regional packs for the: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountains, Southwest, Texas and Oklahoma, Alaska, and West Coast.
Canada is covered by Eastern Canada and Western Canada packs.
Mexico bird identification is available for each region of the country.
Central America packs include Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.
Bird identification help is also available for Europe with our Great Britain and Ireland pack, a Western Europe pack, and a pack covering the Scandinavian countries.
These packs make Merlin the perfect pocket Bird Guide to North America, Bird Guide to Mexico, Bird Guide to Guatemala, Bird Guide to Belize, Bird Guide to Costa Rica, Bird Guide to Europe, Bird Guide to Great Britain, and Bird Guide to Scandinavia.
••• About Photo ID •••
Powered by Visipedia, Merlin Photo ID uses computer vision and deep learning technology to identify birds in photos. Merlin learns to recognize bird species based on training sets of millions of photos from birders at eBird.org. When using Photo ID, enter the date and location where you took the photo; those clues improve Merlin’s accuracy by helping it focus on the species you most likely encountered there.
Security & authenticity
Security rating: Trusted
Signing certificate
Signature matches the Google Play versionChecked by the source store on Jun 25, 2026.
Certificate issued to “Cornell”This is the certificate of the Google Play version.
Store checks and file details
Developer signature verifiedJun 25, 2026
Validated against Google PlayJun 25, 2026
Signed byCN=Unknown, OU=Cornell, O=Cornell, L="ithaca,NY", ST=NY, C=US
Uploaded by “appupdater”Gold tier · 117,810 followers · uploading since 2020
Scans and ratings come from the source store; the certificate comparisons are AAPKs's own, made from the files' published signatures. AAPKs doesn't scan files itself — compare the MD5 and signer after downloading.
Permissions (13)
Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology requests 13 permissions, 6 of them sensitive.
Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology APK: questions and answers
How much space does Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology need?
The APK is 28.5 MB, and the app also needs 434.7 MB of extra data (OBB files). Leave about 491.7 MB free for the installation.
Can I install this APK over the version I already have?
Yes, if your installed copy is older. It is signed like the Google Play version, so Android installs it as an update and keeps your data.
Is the Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab of Ornithology APK safe?
No one can promise that a file is safe, but some things can be checked. The source store rates this file Trusted. Its signature matches the Google Play version. After downloading, check that the file's MD5 is c9ee7e90481c8a41407566e69ed96429.