Applauding Some New Merlin Features

I’ve been a user of the Bird ID tool Merlin for a number of years now, and it has improved massively since it was first released. That said, there was one thing it didn’t do well, and that’s help a user of the tool understand how reliable it’s ID was — it more or less treated it’s findings as 100% correct, which is incorrect (and honestly, not possible). However, a couple of months ago Merlin made a significant update to the app, and now it does take into consideration the likelihood of a species being at a location as part of its ID process, and if flags unlikely birds in its results. This will improve the reliability of data submitted to eBird based on Merlin findings a lot, and also helps users understand which birds Merlin is reporting need more rigourous evaluation (and hopefully visual confirmation) before reporting them. A great example of this around here is Chipping Sparrow, which is uncommon but is findable around here — but its call has strong similarities to the Dark-Eyed…