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What's that bird, what's that flower

Thanks to advances in pattern recognition, mostly called AI these days, a few apps have popped up over the last few years, that can help you identify animals and plants. These will either use the camera or the microphone of your device, or can identify creatures by analyzing an image.

This is a small collection of such apps, the ones I found helpful and which I use on a regular basis. All the these apps are - at the time of writing - for free and don't show any ads.

Bird Identification 1 - Merlin Bird ID

The best app to identify birds by song is probably "Merlin Bird ID" by Cornell Lab. It can identify birds by sound while you are recording one or several birds singing or calling.

After installing the app, you have to register with a mail address (don't worry, you won't get swamped with mails, and you can opt out any time), and you have to download a sound database for the region you want to identify birds in. The big advantage is, that you can identify birds even when being offline, i.e. when you are in a remote area without Internet access.

For more details see their web page.

Download:

Bird Identification 2 - BirdNET

A similar app is "BirdNET", also developed at Cornell Lab. Unlike with "Merlin Bird ID" you don't have to register or download any additional data. Instead, after recording a bird singing, you upload the recording to get it analyzed. The downside is that you need Internet access, but use less resources on your device.

Download:

Plant Identification - Flora Incognita

For plant identification there are several similar apps. I use "Flora Incognita" developed at the University of Ilmenau. You simply take one or sometimes several images of a plant, and the app is usually quite good in identifying it. This app also needs Internet access when used.

Download:

General Identification 1 - ObsIdentify

This app is the Swiss Army knife of identification apps. It was developed in the Netherlands as a companion to an observation database that collects all kinds of sightings since 2004. You can identify animals and plants by taking a photo or uploading an already existing image. As birds and plants are covered by the apps mentioned above, I use this app mainly to identify insects. If you need some competition, you can earn badges for identifying groups of animals and plants, e.g. identifying your first insect.

Download:

General Identification 2 - Google Lens

Last but not least, if you have an Android phone, technically you don't need to install any app. With the "Google Lens" function of the camera and photo apps, you can essentially do a Google image search, and more often than not Google will identify what is in the picture. You can also download Google Lens as a dedicated app.

Download: