Date: 4/20/26 9:51 pm From: Chuq Von Rospach via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: Re: [Tweeters] The Merlin discussion
On Apr 20, 2026 at 13:33:08, Bill Tweit via Tweeters <
<tweeters...> wrote:
> Everybody seems to agree that Merlin is simply a tool, but then
> discussions range well beyond that in terms of expectations and
> limitations. Merlin’s inability to accurately discriminate between CHSP
> and DEJU is a great opportunity to examine some of our expectations about
> Merlin, and determine whether they are realistic. First, why do we expect
> Merlin to be any better than a reasonably skilled human observer?
>
Bottom line, please do not expect Merlin to be perfect, even in North
> America where it is quite good.
>
I don’t, but this is my biggest issue with Merlin. If I’m out birding with
an expert ear birder, they will head and ID many birds I’ll never catch —
but they can also explain what’s going on and note when they aren’t sure of
an ID.
Merlin issues every ID as if it’s perfect. “I hear a bird!” — and it’s
this. I expect all of us on this list know to take that with a grain or
three of salt, but we are not typical Merlin users. I looked at Merlin this
afternoon at a random time and it told me there were 74,000 current users.
I just checked again (at 9PM Washington time) and there are 18,000 users.
Most of those users are newer/casual users. Statistically speaking, none of
them are on this list, or a member of an audbon/alliance chapter, or go out
on group outings with trained leaders that can help guide them. Merlin is
their guide.
And Merlin presents its results as correct and infallible (and yes, I’m
reflecting back to my comments a few days ago on the need for a confidence
factor on these IDs. If Merlin did that, it’d resolve pretty much all
discussion on its accuracy and reliability).
Second, why do we think that use of Merlin has increased the level of error
> in the eBird data?
>
My take is that it hasn’t. Or, with a bit more nuance, I think tools like
Merlin have actually reduced the percentage of errors recorded, but has
also encouraged many more people to submit records, so I expect the total
number of errors is up but the percentage of records that are incorrect has
gone down. I have no data on this, but in my time working with and teaching
newer birders, I’ve seen the trajectory from enthusiastically and
energetically wrong to more thoughtful and skeptical many times (and god
help me, I remember when I was a new baby birder and every freaking bird I
saw was both rare and wrong. That others were willing to drag me into
competence is one reason I’ve been willing to do the same in my pay forward
times)
And, let’s not forget that Merlin was built to assist with several
> objectives, only one of which is helping birders in the field. It has
> another, very significant, purpose: to increase awareness of birds among
> the general population. Most of the Merlin users I encounter now are
> people who take some joy in finding out what birds are present in their
> yard, or on the favorite walking routes, or while they are camping, …
> They aren’t contributing sightings to eBird, they just want to know more
> about the world around them.
>
And it’s amazing at that — and anything that helps people find that spark
that begins the journey into being bird people I’m all for. I just wish
Merlin was willing to say “That’s a Robin” and “This might be a Chipping
Sparrow, but I’m not positive because Juncos sound similar. What are you
seeing?”
My wish here is for Merlin to grow from presenting itself as the infallible
expert into being that AND a mentor and teacher, by putting in some context
when appropriate and leading people into being more skeptical and looking
for more data (like a sighting) to verify the ID. Imagine if Merlin
admitted it wasn’t sure and added a button “I saw it1” that people could
click. They become part of the teaching that improved Merlin down the road…
But I think it’s important that Merlin add that skepticism into how it
presents itself, because of those 74,000 concurrent users this afternoon,
almost all of them have no contact with the people (like those here on this
list) that can do the mentoring and teaching to help them become more
skeptical and thoughtful about Merlin’s results. Merlin needs to be
responsible to set those expectations more realistically for the users that
don’t yet know not to implicitly trust it.
So, let’s be realistic about Merlin.
>
I’d say everyone on this list is, but my worry is about those new/novice
users who are presented with a tool that gives no indication it might be
wrong at time, and therefore has no reason to assume it’s sometimes giving
them bad results. And an easy way to tweak Merlin is to add that confidence
factor into the IDs, as tools like Haiku already have.
Chuq
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Chuq Von Rospach (http://www.chuq.me)
Silverdale, Washington
Birder, Nature and Wildlife Photographer
