6 ms·

Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.

by comboy 16d ago

bakibab 16d ago
Indeed. I use Merlin Bird ID all the time. I found it good across many countries.
drcongo 16d ago
I call it Pokemon Go for grown ups. How many do you have in your life list? I finally managed to snag a Tawny Owl last week.
- nbaugh1 16d ago
  I've got 33. I don't know how that stacks up against other but a large percentage of them came just from my backyard. Just got added a Baltimore Oriole that showed up this week.
  - drcongo 16d ago
    I'm up to 71 thanks to the joys of taking it on holiday to other countries (less joy for my family), and occasionally going places just because I know there'll be new birds there. Personal best for a single session is 23 birds in my back garden over the course of a couple of coffees. I have though spent a fair bit of time making the garden as attractive to different types of bird as possible - mainly through having a variety of different shaped feeders with different feed in. I can recommend the NatureSpy camera feeder too [0] - though I have had to modify it a little to make the food hole smaller otherwise magpies empty the thing in a single day just chucking all the seed on the floor. Dickheads. [0] https://naturespy.org/collections/wifi-solar-bird-feeder-nestbox-cameras/products/wifi-birdcam-pro https://naturespy.org/collections/wifi-solar-bird-feeder-nes...
  - astura 16d ago
    I've only been birdwatching since spring and I got 28 species already. Lots of seabirds because I spend a lot of the time at the beach.
- justincormack 15d ago
  Tawny owls make so many different noises. The classic sound is two, one calls and one answers but they are very chatty with different sounds. They live all around, but never seen one.
phainopepla2 16d ago
But a warning for novice birders: Merlin's sound ID feature produces a lot of false positives.
- drcongo 16d ago
  I've not seen this personally, but maybe it's region specific.
- sq_ 16d ago
  Merlin got me into birding, and I've found this to be true, at least in some regions, especially if there's lots of background noise. Unless a species has a really, really unique call or song, I've made it my personal rule to get eyes on it and, if I'm still not convinced, to take a picture and cross reference with iNaturalist and what folks on there think of it. I've learned to curse the species that differ from others by the sheen of the backs of the males' necks or the angle of a wingbar. Also, gulls that only differ by things like the color of their feet or beaks.
- pfdietz 16d ago
  You can usually tell, though. Rare birds in the wrong place or time that come up only once are problematic, but if the bird is detected repeatedly there's a better chance. You should also be on the lookout for birds that mimic other birds (like the northern mockingbird and the gray catbird.)
- sib 16d ago
  Cornell / Merlin / eBird publishes a global species frequency DB indexed by location and date (so, how likely is a species to appear in a place, on a day of the year)... In a project that I was working on, this helped a lot when used to influence the "raw" identification based on appearance alone.
- bluebarbet 16d ago
  For info, there's a FOSS bird-call app, available on F-Droid, that's pretty decent: WhoBird
- wlonkly 16d ago
CobrastanJorji 16d ago
Merlin's story is very interesting: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-magic-of-merlin/ https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-magic-of-merlin/ The journey to a magical, free bird sound ID app involves some obvious steps (the NSF gave them money), but the amount of timeline offramps is really high. The NSF didn't think this app was educational ("it's just telling them the answer, they don't even have to work for it!"), the funding ran out so they were thinking of charging money, eBird happened to have five years of bird sound recordings they could use, a computer vision guy on the team happened to learn that spectrograms are basically the same as pictures... And the result is tremendously useful! They get great signal on where birds are, and they're making people so much more interested in birds and nature and science. And I think charging $1 for the app or, shudder, some sort of subscription model might've ruined the whole thing.
- utopiah 15d ago
  Funnily enough I was in the bathroom (that's where I do my most random thinking) just yesterday evening thinking how template matching in computer vision, e.g. https://docs.opencv.org/5.0/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_template_matching/py_template_matching.html https://docs.opencv.org/5.0/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_templ... is basically audio signal processing but instead of being temporal it is spatial. Different signals but same principle.
venmul 16d ago
Btw the btw Merlin ID and OP's Birdnet uses the same model
trillic 15d ago
Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo
- world2vec 15d ago
  Love that documentary.

Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.

by comboy 16d ago

Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.

bakibab 16d ago

Indeed. I use Merlin Bird ID all the time. I found it good across many countries.

drcongo 16d ago

I call it Pokemon Go for grown ups. How many do you have in your life list? I finally managed to snag a Tawny Owl last week.

nbaugh1 16d ago
I've got 33. I don't know how that stacks up against other but a large percentage of them came just from my backyard. Just got added a Baltimore Oriole that showed up this week.
- drcongo 16d ago
  I'm up to 71 thanks to the joys of taking it on holiday to other countries (less joy for my family), and occasionally going places just because I know there'll be new birds there. Personal best for a single session is 23 birds in my back garden over the course of a couple of coffees. I have though spent a fair bit of time making the garden as attractive to different types of bird as possible - mainly through having a variety of different shaped feeders with different feed in. I can recommend the NatureSpy camera feeder too [0] - though I have had to modify it a little to make the food hole smaller otherwise magpies empty the thing in a single day just chucking all the seed on the floor. Dickheads. [0] https://naturespy.org/collections/wifi-solar-bird-feeder-nestbox-cameras/products/wifi-birdcam-pro https://naturespy.org/collections/wifi-solar-bird-feeder-nes...
- astura 16d ago
  I've only been birdwatching since spring and I got 28 species already. Lots of seabirds because I spend a lot of the time at the beach.
justincormack 15d ago
Tawny owls make so many different noises. The classic sound is two, one calls and one answers but they are very chatty with different sounds. They live all around, but never seen one.

phainopepla2 16d ago

But a warning for novice birders: Merlin's sound ID feature produces a lot of false positives.

drcongo 16d ago
I've not seen this personally, but maybe it's region specific.
sq_ 16d ago
Merlin got me into birding, and I've found this to be true, at least in some regions, especially if there's lots of background noise. Unless a species has a really, really unique call or song, I've made it my personal rule to get eyes on it and, if I'm still not convinced, to take a picture and cross reference with iNaturalist and what folks on there think of it. I've learned to curse the species that differ from others by the sheen of the backs of the males' necks or the angle of a wingbar. Also, gulls that only differ by things like the color of their feet or beaks.
pfdietz 16d ago
You can usually tell, though. Rare birds in the wrong place or time that come up only once are problematic, but if the bird is detected repeatedly there's a better chance. You should also be on the lookout for birds that mimic other birds (like the northern mockingbird and the gray catbird.)
sib 16d ago
Cornell / Merlin / eBird publishes a global species frequency DB indexed by location and date (so, how likely is a species to appear in a place, on a day of the year)... In a project that I was working on, this helped a lot when used to influence the "raw" identification based on appearance alone.
bluebarbet 16d ago
For info, there's a FOSS bird-call app, available on F-Droid, that's pretty decent: WhoBird
wlonkly 16d ago

CobrastanJorji 16d ago

Merlin's story is very interesting: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-magic-of-merlin/ https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-magic-of-merlin/ The journey to a magical, free bird sound ID app involves some obvious steps (the NSF gave them money), but the amount of timeline offramps is really high. The NSF didn't think this app was educational ("it's just telling them the answer, they don't even have to work for it!"), the funding ran out so they were thinking of charging money, eBird happened to have five years of bird sound recordings they could use, a computer vision guy on the team happened to learn that spectrograms are basically the same as pictures... And the result is tremendously useful! They get great signal on where birds are, and they're making people so much more interested in birds and nature and science. And I think charging $1 for the app or, shudder, some sort of subscription model might've ruined the whole thing.

utopiah 15d ago
Funnily enough I was in the bathroom (that's where I do my most random thinking) just yesterday evening thinking how template matching in computer vision, e.g. https://docs.opencv.org/5.0/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_template_matching/py_template_matching.html https://docs.opencv.org/5.0/py_tutorials/py_imgproc/py_templ... is basically audio signal processing but instead of being temporal it is spatial. Different signals but same principle.

venmul 16d ago

Btw the btw Merlin ID and OP's Birdnet uses the same model

trillic 15d ago

Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo

world2vec 15d ago
Love that documentary.