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Without knowing for sure, I think you must have an ebird account [perhaps you don't know it]. Merlin will surely be accessing your details there to "know" what you've seen. Did you have to supply a username and password at any point? [if you did, try them on the ebird website]
snapshot2022
Well-known member
Welcome to the Bird Forum hope someone can give you the answer to your questions.
Thank you, THE_FERN and yes, you're quite correct. After I posted (!), I logged into eBird just in case, and found exactly what I was looking for..!
For anyone's interest, I started logging each new bird this time last year. The total is just under 130 now, one or two suspect (probably false) records, I know .... It got a species boost by a trip to BC and Alaska. Some of my different lifers are I think the same animal, just under different names for UK and North America! Eg Pacific Wren and Eurasian Wren look indistinguishable to me.?
These 2 [pacific, eurasian] differ slightly—as both do from winter wren. Split by Clements on the basis of genetics. The US ones were once both called winter wren. Many species or populations at least look similar but are divided by the great plains—this may translate into a big genetic rift. Many also reflect the invasion route via Beringia and hence look like eurasian species [e.g. bison]. One or two may look similar due to shared ancestry across the Atlantic (e.g. The Welsh). Taxonomy is subjective and you often find that different authors split things up in different ways. So there simply is no single answer to "how many species of birds are there?"
Probably ebird will give you what you want / need but there are significant downsides to it. The biggest 2 of these are: only birds [have to record other things as comments], and based on "checklists" which in turn are based around "trips". This means you don't know where within that trip you actually saw the bird—unless again you explicitly record this as a comment [you can record things as incidentals but that's tedious and ebird will often destroy your point coordinates].
Some other systems, notably observation.org, are more "point based"—record where you saw each thing, and include other organisms. Those with cameras often use ebird for birds and inaturalist for everything else.
Hello and welcome to the forum, enjoy and all the best.
