Recently, we went birding on Barters Island with some friends who had been enthusiastically exploring a new app developed by our friends and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The app is called Merlin, and it’s designed to assist people in identifying birds. On our bird walk, we scanned out over the Sheepscot River and were enjoying views of a winter-plumaged common loon and lots of Bonaparte’s gulls when we glanced up to see two large, white birds with black wingtips — northern gannets!

Gannets normally occur out at sea, so our sighting was quite a surprise. While still tidal salt water, the area off of Barters Island is almost 10 miles upstream from Reid State Park — quite far inland for a gannet.

When we got back to the house, our friend opened the Merlin app on her iPad, and we decided to see if it would be “smart” enough to include the northern gannet as one of the species to consider. Merlin starts off asking you where you saw the bird you are trying to identify, then sorts through records of bird sightings collected in the eBird database (that’s the website where anyone can send in their bird sightings) to narrow down the possibilities.

Then it asks you some simple questions about the size of the bird and the major colors on the bird.

Although we already knew that we had seen a northern gannet, we made believe that we hadn’t and said that the bird was as big as a goose and mostly white. Sure enough, like a magician, one of the species Merlin pulled up on the short list of possibilities was indeed northern gannet!

Once Merlin provides that list of species to consider, it then provides you with photos, sounds, range maps, and identification hints for each species. We had fun listening to the sounds and noting which ones were recorded by certain of our friends from Cornell. 

We tested Merlin on a number of birds that morning including the great-crested flycatcher that we had seen when we first arrived, and the hermit thrush that appeared in the cherry tree near the front porch as we sipped our iced coffee. Merlin helpfully included them in the lists of possible species to consider.

Of course, it’s important to remember that Merlin is a just a (free) tool to help you figure out or learn more about a bird that you can’t identify or are not sure about. You are still the one that has to look carefully at the bird to note its size, coloration and other features. And that is as it should be. The joy in birding is still in that moment when you watch the hermit thrush pluck a berry off the bush beside the porch. Or when you have the pleasant surprise to see a northern gannet beating its long wings over the Sheepscot while on a stroll with friends along the shore.