[AnotherGoodName]

In general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it.

There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.

[jcalx]

It definitely has trouble with similar species sometimes — I've noticed it recently with crows and warblers. But it does a great job generally and direct observation of the bird usually clears up the confusion.

[rigrassm]

I have a bunch of Blue Jays around my house and it turns out they are so good at imitating a specific hawk species(blanking on its name) that Merlin actually reports it as the hawk! I went and listened to real recordings of that hawks call and I couldn't tell it apart from the Jays imitation call.

Now, I know it's technically possible it was a real id, but Im pretty sure the bald eagle it detected was actually one of the kids down the street running around screaming lol

[Jolter]

Surely your local blujays must have heard the hawk somewhere in order to learn its call? It figures that a hawk would occasionally show up in your neighborhood.

Machine identification can still need some manual confirmation, even though this app does a really good job. It’s not a confirmed sighting until you have a visual confirmation.

[rigrassm]

There definitely are hawks all around my area.

In this case, while I couldn't see it directly while he was making the call, I had watched him fly to and land in a nearby tree before the call and then shortly after watched it take off. So I can't be 100% sure, but I'd be willing to bet that it was the Jay.

[roryirvine]

The only errors I've seen it make with common birds in the UK are also with finches - specifically with the greenfinch's "at rest" twitter, which it consistently mistakes for a goldfinch.

The two are visually distinctive but, in Merlin's defence, I can't tell them apart by ear either!