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<br><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Feb 2, 2026 at 01:03:31, Robert O'Brien via Tweeters <<a href="mailto:tweeters@u.washington.edu">tweeters@u.washington.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" type="cite" style="margin-left:0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204)"><div dir="ltr">For quite a while, there have been complaints that some bird calls/songs are reported as birds that 'cannot possibly be present'.by Merlin. Merlin is often held up to scorn.<br>But what if the bird IS ACTUALLY present, as a vagrant. For instance rare eastern warblers breeding/singing in coastal SW Oregon </div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">My take is that if the bird is that rare and your only ID data is a merlin ID, that’s not a good enough ID to add it to eBird, so I think Merlin is doing the right thing here. Without stronger evidence (visual confirmation, enough experience with the call to call it without assistance), that’s not a solid ID in my mind so it lives on as a “something”.</div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" type="cite" style="margin-left:0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204)"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>But for experienced birders, that means vagrants are out of bounds for Merlin. Either location or seasonal wise.</div></div></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div>I think this is the right call. Newer birders tend to trust Merlin explicitly (ask any eBird reviewer). Experienced birders will many times (but not always) know enough to be skeptical, and experienced enough to not make an eBird catch definitive without confirming evidence. I’m all for eBird protecting the naive here. </div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">That said, there are some things Merlin ought to do that it’s not that annoy me. </div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">First, I experimented for a while with a tool called Haiku, which is one of a number automatic song pickup systems you can get now. It’s pretty good in a number of ways, but among other things, having a microphone listening outside my door 24x7 just wasn’t my idea of fun. One thing I want Merlin to add is Haiku’s confidence rating — it not only gives you the ID, but a oonfidence level (high/medium/low) for that ID. That way, you can have some sense of how good the ID is, and Merlin makes it seem all of its IDs are absolutely perfect (which it’s not)</div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">Second, why doesn’t Merlin make it easy to extract a given call for further analysis or uploading with the eBird report? This should be fairly easy to implement, either on the fly or as a later “re-process” phase offline, and would make it a lot easier to do follow up listening or sharing with others for these less likely IDs. Right now, the recording stays one big mass of data that you have to manually pull apart and honestly, that’s too much hassle for almost all IDs. They could make improving this and adding good call data to eBird a lot simpler.</div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">Overall though, while I have my issues with Merlin, I think it’s gotten way better in the last few years, and I’m all for it leaning towards doing the right thing for newbies here.</div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote" dir="ltr">Chuq</div><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(39,39,40);font-family:-apple-system,sans-serif;font-size:14px"><div><br></div><div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">---------------------------------------<br><br>Chuq Von Rospach (<a href="http://www.chuq.me" target="_blank">http://www.chuq.me</a>)</div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">Silverdale, Washington</div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">Birder, Nature and Wildlife Photographer<br><br>Email me at: <a href="mailto:chuqvr@gmail.com" target="_blank">chuqvr@gmail.com</a><br>Mastodon: @<a href="mailto:chuqvr@fosstodon.org" target="_blank">chuqvr@fosstodon.org</a><br><br>Stay Updated with what I'm doing: <a href="https://www.chuq.me/6fps/" target="_blank">https://www.chuq.me/6fps/</a><br>My latest e-book: <a href="https://www.chuq.me/ebooks" target="_blank">https://www.chuq.me/ebooks</a><br><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>