How To ID Bird Species From A Photograph

There are about 10,000 species of birds in the world. Bird photography and watching have become a very popular past time and profession for many. Identifying the birds correctly every time can be quite a challenge because of the lighting and angle, etc.

Merlin Bird Photo ID is a project attempting to identify birds via a photograph. It is a collaboration between Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and Visipedia. The database is very limited right now and I find it less useful than buying a good bird field guide and peruse it thoroughly. However, it may get better with time and more funding. Below is an excerpt of their story.


At one time or another, everyone asks the question, “What is that bird?”

Finding the answer can be remarkably challenging. Part of the mission of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is to help people find that answer. We know it is hard to figure out the name of the bird you saw when sorting through a massive field guide, using search engines, and other resources.

Merlin is designed to be a birding coach for beginning and intermediate bird watchers. Merlin asks you the same questions that an expert birder would ask to help solve a mystery bird sighting. Notice that date and location are Merlin’s first and most important questions. It takes years of experience in the field to know what species are expected at a given location and date. Merlin shares this this knowledge with you based on more than 70 million sightings submitted to eBird from birders across the United States and Canada.

Merlin also asks you to describe the color, size, and behavior of the bird you saw. Because no two people describe birds exactly the same way, Merlin presents a shortlist of possible species based on descriptions from Cornell Lab experts as well as thousands of bird enthusiasts who helped “teach” Merlin by participating in online activities. They’ve contributed more than 3 million descriptors to help Merlin match your input with the most likely birds. When you identify a species and click “This is My Bird,” Merlin also saves your record to help improve its future performance.

We launched Merlin with 285 species most commonly encountered in North America. Our goal is to add more species and more features to keeping improving Merlin’s accuracy through time. High on our wish list is a prompt enabling you to give Merlin a hint about the shape or type of bird you saw (e.g., songbird, shorebird, raptor). We appreciate your feedback about what’s working for you, what isn’t, and features you’d like to see. If you’d like to support our efforts to continue developing Merlin, please consider making a donation. We hope you enjoy using Merlin and sharing it with your friends and family!

Meet the Merlin App Team

Jessie Barry has a passion for bird identification and sharing it with others. A birder since age 10 and now top bird ID expert in North America, Jessie thinks that leading the Merlin team is just like living a dream.

David Bell is a lifelong birder who has spent his career in businesses devoted to improving the environment. His expertise ranges from birds to physics and machine learning. Dave leads the team at Birds in the Hand, LLC, which partnered with the Cornell Lab to develop Merlin.

Alex Chang is known as “Tech Norris” by the Web Communications team he leads at the Cornell Lab. There isn’t a technical question, business strategy, mountainous trail, or rock wall Alex won’t tackle.

Miyoko Chu leads the Cornell Lab’s Communications team and is the principal investigator of the NSF-funded Merlin project. She has been amazed to see Merlin go from an idea to reality, thanks to a talented team and thousands of contributors.

Scott Haber reviewed every photo in Merlin and still has not tired of looking at birds! As the content manager, Scott’s knowledge of birds and organization of rich media formed the backbone of Merlin and All About Birds.

Will Morris is an interface and visualization designer at the Cornell Lab. He leads design for eBird, Birds of North America Online, and Neotropical Birds.

Sarah Seroussi created the look-and-feel and led the UX strategy for the Merlin Bird ID app. She also built this responsive app marketing website, to showcase the app. Sarah has designed several major citizen-science websites for the Cornell Lab. She has over 10 years in user experience and interactive web design.

The Merlin team at the Cornell Lab includes Steve Kelling, Rick Bonney, Tina Phillips, Tim Levatich, Ben Barkley, and Luke Seitz. Special thanks to John Fitzpatrick, Adriane Callinan, Mary Guthrie, Sean Scanlon, Nicola Leckie, Hugh Powell, France Kehas-Dewaghe, Syed Rehman, Greg Desile, and Marshall Iliff.

Merlin Photographers

Brian Sullivan: In between leading eBird and serving as the photo editor for the Birds of North America Online, Brian manages to snap a few shots on his travels. By a few, we mean thousands! He has 18,000 Red-tailed Hawk images. Can you guess Brian’s favorite bird?

Gerrit Vyn: Few photographers have the artistic eye, patience in the field, and bird expertise to come back from expeditions with stunning images, sounds, and videos every time. Gerrit is a cinematographer and photographer in the Cornell Lab’s Multimedia program.

Christopher Wood: Chris has been carrying a camera on his birding trips since he was in the 5th grade, documenting one rare bird after another. Chris serves as project leader for eBird and Neotropical Birds.

In addition to Brian, Chris, and Gerrit, we thank the following people for contributing images for the app: Laura Erickson, Kelly Colgan Azar, Steven G. Mlodinow, Penny Bauer, Gerry Dewaghe, Timothy Lenz, Scott A. Haber, Sam Hough, Tony Leukering, David Waltman, Mark Eden, Margo Goetschkes, William Edward Kendall, Thomas B. Johnson, Susan E. Newman, Luke Seitz, Shawn Billerman, Judy Crawford, Jim Cummins, Jason Daly, Tripp Davenport, Jim Dubois, Susan Edmiston, Olivia Graves, Cory Gregory, Dan Haas, Wanda Harnish, Burney Huff, Marshall Iliff, Evan Jackson, Adam S. Johnson, Marty Jones, Larry Jordan, Alex Lamoreaux, Thomas Meinzen, Carol Miller, April Molina, Tom Murray, Carol O’Neil, Laurel Rezeau, Arlene Ripley, Will Stuart, Jeremiah Trimble, Jim Williams, Liam Wolff, Ginnie Yerkovich, Cameron Rognan, Donna Bragg, Herb Helmstaedt, Mairis Kilcher, Michael Henry, Nancy Merrill, Tony and Louisa Katlubeck, Ed Kendall, Terry Johnson, Bill Thompson.

Recordists and Contributors

Audio recordings: Recordings from more than 85 recordists who have contributed to the Macaulay Library are featured in this app. The majority of the recordings in this app were recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller, William W. H. Gunn, Wilbur L. Hershberger, Gerrit Vyn, Michael J. Andersen, and Randolph S. Little. Audio engineer Matt Young led the charge selecting recordings. You can explore more than 150,000 sounds and videos on the Macaulay Library website.

Identification text: Jessie Barry and Luke Seitz crafted text for each species specifically for Merlin. The text is tailored for those moments when you are watching a bird in the field and using Merlin to pick among species. Thanks to Hugh Powell and Chris Wood for their valuable comments.

Maps: Sourced from the Birds of North America Online. Special thanks to Brooke Keeney for updating and reformatting the maps.

Intro video: Produced by the Cornell Lab’s Multimedia program. We appreciate the creative work of John Bowman, Tom Swartwout, Karen Rodriguez, Eric Liner, and Yula Kapetanakos.

Our Thanks

Merlin is made possible by support from the National Science Foundation (grant number DRL-1010818), Pennington® Wild Bird Food, the Faucett Catalyst Fund, and friends and members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We would like to express our gratitude to them as well as to the photographers who generously donated more than 2,000 images included in the Merlin app. We also give our heartfelt thanks to the dedicated volunteers who made this app possible: eBird participants, visitors to All About Birds, and sound recordists who contributed their audio recordings to the Macaulay Library.

Wildlife Photography - How to photograph Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds belong to the family of birds known as Trochilidae. They are among the smallest avians, most species measure about 3 to 5 inches in length and generally weigh between one to two tenth of an ounce. The smallest Hummer is the Bee Hummingbird and the largest is the South American Giant Hummingbird, which can weigh about an ounce. All Hummers can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings approximately 10 to 80 times per second, depending on the species, and they can fly between 20 to 30 mph, reaching over 60 mph in a dive. Hummingbirds have one of the fastest heart beats in the animal kingdom, with one species (Blue-throated) clocked at well over 1,000 beats per minute. They are also the only group of birds able to fly backwards. No one really knows how long Hummingbirds live in the wild but most experts agree the average life span is between 3 to 4 years. However, in captivity they can live well over 10 years.


There are over 300 different species of Hummingbirds. They are found only in The Americas, from southern Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean. Their habitat range from the lowlands all the way up to the snow line at 16,000 feet in Ecuador. The area containing the most species is the subtropical zone of Central America, down to Columbia and Ecuador. 133 species can be found in Columbia alone and the United States has about 18 species. Like most birds, Hummers have virtually no sense of smell, they are attracted to their food source mostly by sight. Shrubs, vines and flowers like Coral Honeysuckle, Fuchsia, Texas Sage and Columbine are good sources of food for these voracious feeders. In addition to their intake of nectar, Hummers also feed on small insects to supplement their diet with protein.

Hummingbirds are known for their rainbow colors and the brilliant, iridescent plumage of the males make photographing them especially enjoyable and challenging. Many hotels, resorts and restaurants in Central America put out feeders to attract these birds and one can photograph them with little difficulty. Generally, I do not like to photograph Hummers on a feeder, except during migration season, when feeders are put out to give them extra food and replenishment. Staging elaborate props and multiple flashes to photograph Hummers never appeal to me. I like the challenge of finding and photographing them naturally.  Locating Hummers in the wild can be quite a challenge. They can easily camouflage themselves in trees and foliage. I follow my two 'Hummer rules' - Listen and Freeze. Most Hummers make sharp, chirping sounds. Train your ears to focus on these sounds and you can locate the general area. Then remain perfectly still. When you are motionless, small movements of the Hummingbird bobbing in and out of flowers and foliage will reveal its exact position. I am rather punctilious when it comes to Hummer photography. Only certain shots appeal to me, like freezing their wings in a fully swept back or forward position.

The Canon EOS-1D X Mark II , EOS-1D Mk IV and EOS-7D Mk II cameras plus the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II, EF 400mm f/4 DO IS II and EF 200-400mm f/4L IS lenses are the equipment for my work. Read my FAQs on camera and lens recommendation and see my equipment bag here. I photograph in the Aperture (AV) mode and set my camera to 1 stop above the maximum and an ISO speed of between 400 to 800, if the light is good. Generally, a shutter speed of at least 1/1250 second is required to obtain sharp, stop action shots.


The Drive Mode is set to maximum continuous burst, the faster the better. If the light is poor or fading, I will open the lens up to its maximum aperture and go all the way up to ISO 3200, in that order, if necessary. My AF points are set to the center if the bird is feeding in thick foliage and surrounding assist points turned on as well when the foliage is sparse. Focusing Priority takes precedent over shutter release or frame rates.  No point in getting blurry shots unless the subject is clearly in focus. Depending on where the majority of light is coming from, in relation to the bird, I would also adjust my Exposure Compensation to account for the reflection from the bright colorful gorgets. With the combination of bodies and lenses I bring, it affords me a good range of focal lengths, ranging from approximately 70mm to 900mm. Occasionally, I will use the 1.4X extender and extension tubes.

Usually I do not use a tripod because most Hummers in the wild tend not to stay in one place too long. When I do use one, the light weight, carbon fiber Slik Pro 634 CF and 824 CF work well for me. Freezing a Hummingbird in midair with its wings completely stretched out, in all its resplendent colors, is one of the most exhilarating photographic experiences. There are many birding tours offering to take photographers on a journey of their life time. Stick to one or two areas and do plenty of research before you go. National parks and official tourism sites of the countries you plan to visit offer many valuable information and tips for free.

Photographing Hummingbirds require a lot of patience, practice and luck. Click here to view some Hummingbirds photographs I have taken over the years. For more posts on photographing other wildlife, you will find African elephants, Polar bears, Bengal tigers, Killer whales and Blue whales adventures here. I have been The Wildlife Ho-tographer for 25 years using Canon gear. You can read my FAQs on equipment and see more of my work on MichaelDanielHo.com. You can also follow my travels on my Blog, Twitter , Instagram and Facebook.