Date: 4/18/26 6:18 pm From: Dennis Paulson via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Beware the Chipping Sparrow
I’ll add to what Carol said. I have been seeing this rash of Chipping Sparrow reports by sound, and indeed it seems that Merlin does confuse juncos and Chipping Sparrows with some frequency. And of course this isn’t the only error that Merlin makes. I understood that the main reason for developing Merlin was so that people could learn bird sounds more readily, but it seems that it is used primarily for adding to eBird lists.
If Merlin makes errors only 5-10% of the time, and I think that may not be far off, think of that number of errors times the number of eBird checklists being submitted every day—potentially hundreds and hundreds of erroneous records in Cornell’s database just in our state.
It seems appropriate that any time Merlin reports an unexpected bird, if at all possible that bird should be confirmed with your own eyes or your own knowledge of bird vocalizations.
Dennis Paulson
Seattle
> On Apr 18, 2026, at 1:23 PM, Carol Riddell via Tweeters <tweeters...> wrote:
>
> It’s that time of year when Chipping Sparrow shows up on the eBird basic county checklists in Western Washington at the same time that Cornell’s Merlin Sound ID suggests it frequently when it hears Dark-eyed Junco. Chipping Sparrows tend to be more abundant at this time of year in the more eastern parts of the Puget Sound counties and rarely closer to the Sound. I see a lot of Chipping Sparrow ticks in checklists where they are never or very rarely seen. And those ticks are never documented, which suggests the sparrow shows up on a Sound ID list and then it just gets added to a checklist with no confirmation or documentation. If you are an eBirder, please consider leaving an unconfirmed Chipping Sparrow off your checklist or add it with documentation. Birds are never distributed equally throughout a county. We need to consider habitat, food sources, nesting opportunities, and traditional locations for a species, and then use that knowledge to decide whether it is an appropriate addition to a public checklist or just a Sound ID possibility.
>
> Good birding,
>
> Carol Riddell
> Edmonds, WA
> <cariddellwa...>
>
>
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