Meet the Syracuse bird-lover behind the wildly popular Merlin Bird ID app

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand this summer, you’ve probably heard of the Merlin Bird ID App. It’s a creation of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that allows you to identify birds you see or hear, with ease. Over the course of this year, it’s been downloaded by millions of people who use it to identify thousands of species of birds based on their song.

And the man behind the app is a Syracuse local named Drew Weber.

The Merlin app has caught the attention of veteran bird watchers, newcomers, and news outlets like CBS Good Morning and USA Today. It’s basically Shazam for birds. The Sound ID feature listens to the birds around you and shows real-time suggestions for what birds are singing. You can also snap a photo of a bird, or pull one in from your camera roll, and Photo ID will offer a short list of possible matches. Both Sound and Photo ID work completely offline, so you can identify birds no matter where you are.

Weber, the app’s creator, lives in the Comstock neighborhood. He moved here about 10 years ago after his wife, Justine, took a job with SUNY ESF.

Weber grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. As a youngster, he says that his father was casually into bird watching. Together they tried to identify various species when on walks. It was not until he got older that he realized there was a whole community of bird watchers out there, and that there was even a chance to work in the field with them.

Weber attended Goshen College in Indiana and graduated with a degree in environment studies in 2006. His first job outside of college was working with an organization, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, where he counted migrating hawks and eagles. His work history also includes a stint with the Wild Birds Unlimited near Fayetteville.

Weber got involved in mobile apps soon after the launch of the iPhone, helping develop an app called BirdsEye that helps people find birds. When the Cornell Lab jumped into the mobile app arena, they hired Weber as project manager. He commutes to Cornell twice a week while spending his remaining time in Syracuse.

When the app first launched, it had the ability to identify 200 species. Today, that number has ballooned to 10,300 species.

Weber is able to identify a bird flying 1,000 feet away by a smile strip or a flap of the wing.

During Covid he spent much of his time on and around Onondaga Lake, noting the billion-dollar clean up undertaken by Honeywell that returned portions of the area back to its natural habitat. The West Shore Trail that opened upon completion allows visitors to walk/ride in an area that was previously only observable from afar.

It’s a perfect place for bird watching.

During that time, Weber identified more than 240 different bird species in Onondaga County alone. That’s an incredible feat – there are only about 500 bird species in the entire state. Drew has uploaded a list of all the birds by photo, audio, and video that he has seen in Onondaga County and has cataloged them here.

Weber credits much of the app’s growth to the broader bird community across the world. The app’s popular sound identification feature was only made possible after users uploaded more than a million recording clips.

“It’s not just the nerdy people anymore, everyone is joining in,” he said. Over the past year, 1 out of every 67 people in the US has used the app.

The app is technically in its infancy. Other features such as social sharing, quizzes, and teaching field skills are planned for the future, Weber said. Long-term, the hope is that the app can “bend the curve,” back in the favor of birds.

Since 1970, there has been a decline of 3 billion North American birds, or a loss of 30% in population. If more folks are appreciating birds, if the app can put this message in front of people, maybe, Weber hopes, there is a way to turn things around.

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