Embrace Nature: Apps for Connecting with the Great Outdoors
Do you ever wonder about the trees on your street or the birds you hear singing in their branches? Thanks to iNaturalist and Merlin Bird ID, exploring the fascinating world of animals, insects, and plants has never been easier.
These apps simplify the process of identifying wildlife and greenery. Even better, by using these apps to identify species you also play a part in biodiversity monitoring.
iNaturalist: Become a Community Scientist
iNaturalist is a free app that identifies a wide range of living things, from plants and trees, to animals, insects, and fungi. Whether it is a mysterious flower you noticed while walking past a neighbor's yard or an unknown bird you spotted in the park, iNaturalist can help. Snap a photo of the organism you want to identify and upload it along with where you found it. The app suggests up to ten possibilities for identification.
Once you have picked the best match, it’s time to wait for other community members to confirm it. When two members agree on an identification, your observation becomes “research-grade” and gets added to a database used by scientists to track species. Even if your observation doesn't quite reach "research-grade," it can still be helpful for scientific research.
By taking pictures of plants and animals and noting where they were found, iNaturalist users become part of a vast group of community scientists. Apart from identifying species, the photos you upload can also show when flowers bloom, birds migrate, or animals breed. This information is important for understanding how climate change affects the environment, giving insights into shifts in the quality of habitats and other biodiversity trends.
iNaturalist also provides a map feature that shows what species others identified in your area. This may be especially helpful for focusing on the abundance of nature rather than on bad news.
Merlin Bird ID: Simplifying Bird Identification
Merlin is an app designed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to help beginners identify birds. It asks a series of questions—such as location, date, size, color, and behavior—that experts use to identify birds. Based on your answers Merlin offers recommendations from its extensive database about what bird you might have sighted.
Bird identification is sometimes complex, but Merlin provides quick access to information. If you hear a bird but can’t see it well, Merlin can help with that too. Simply turn on sound recording and if the app recognizes the bird's call, it identifies the bird.
While Merlin is great for recognizing birds it sometimes needs users to double-check its findings, especially in noisy areas. For instance, if there's a lot of traffic near a park, it might cause Merlin to misidentify a bird. Confirming these recordings with a visual check helps make sure the information is accurate.
As users answer questions and record songs and calls, they learn about birds while acting for climate. Observing changes in bird populations and behaviors, using Merlin and similar bird ID apps, provides key information about how the environment is transforming due to climate change. Birds are very sensitive to shifts in their surroundings, making them great indicators of ecosystem health and climate change effects.
Merlin also integrates seamlessly with eBird, another Cornell Lab project, allowing users to upload their observations to a global database that aids in bird conservation and research. eBird collects millions of bird observations worldwide, providing comprehensive data that helps scientists track bird migration patterns, population changes, and ecological trends over time.
Celebrating Urban Biodiversity
iNaturalist and Merlin Bird ID are powerful tools for appreciating and conserving urban biodiversity. By using apps such as these, people around the world can add meaningful encounters with nature to their daily routines. From finding insects in a community garden to recording bird sightings, every observation contributes to a better understanding of urban ecosystems and strengthens the ability to respond to climate change.
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