I got to play with a prototype of a Digital Guide that Swarovski Optik is working on with Merlin from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The video above gives you an idea of how it works. We demoed the guide with some birds like a mourning dove—mostly because the bird was super chill and not moving and it made a great show. I also tested it on green jays and pauraques.

But I also took it out on some of my field trips in the Rio Grande Valley to really put it through its paces. Here are some screen shots:

Here’s a picture of a female vermilion flycatcher on an overcast day.

Here I zoom in on the image I got with the Digital Guide prototype in the Merlin app.

You can take great photos with this, it’s basically an 8x30 monocular with a camera built in. And though it can take great pictures, I was more interested in what it could do if conditions weren’t great for photography, but you still wanted a bird ID. It works great. Scary great.

It’s a wifi hotspot so it can send the images to either Merlin or the Swarovski app. If you have good cell service, Merlin will ID it right away.

I can tell that it works well in warm weather, but I was curious about some cold weather and I mean some serious Minnesota cold. I took it to Sax Zim Bog on a -15 degree Fahrenheit day to see what would happen. The device worked well, but the lack of cell service from Verizon meant that Merlin didn’t work so great up there. On the upside, I was able to store photos and use Merlin when I had a reliable connection.

Here’s a black-backed woodpecker taken with the Swarovski Digital Guide.

The Digital Guide saved the date, time and location of where the image was taken. So even though I had lack of service in the field, all the information was saved for when I could use Merlin. And all of it was stored in a separate album in Photos.

The black-backed woodpecker was Merlin’s first ID.

Now, I know some people are going to gnash their teeth over this—”THIS IS GOING TO RUIN BIRDING! WHY CAN’T PEOPLE USE A BOOK!”

This is not going to ruin birding. This is a tool to help you get started. And there will always be people interested in artisanal bird identification. It’s fascinating to watch where technology can take us. And to have a device with Swarovski quality glass that works with Cornell’s Merlin app is amazing. There are plans that the device will also work to identify other things like mammals and butterflies as well.

The future is now.