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russellbeattie
ctoth
Now I am convinced that Mockingbirds are merely bird repeaters helping move messages through a bird network.
dtgriscom
Playing telephone via bird call. In one end as a song sparrow, out the other end as a Great Blue Heron.
ses4j
Merlin is the most widely-used audio recognition app. It's amazing, try it out. BirdNET is another project (also affiliated with Cornell) that works in a similar way. This project is about locally installing BirdNET.
gs17
For me, the app version is able to detect mockingbirds (and the similar mimicking Brown Thrasher) as themselves most of the time. I'm honestly impressed it can do it at all for their songs on small samples.
thefourthchime
You should try the app. it's great!
mycowerk
BirdNET and Pl@ntNet have to be my favorite uses of AI to date. A true use of technology for the greater good.
I've actually been thinking about automated bird recognition for a while now, I live underneath a flight corridor for migrating common cranes (near Berlin). I'd love to be able to one day track their migration across the continent in real time using data from crowdsourced base stations.
I wonder if migrating birds could be identified in flight using optical/radar/audio. If anybody else has had similar ideas I'd really love to chat on this topic.
shellfishgene
The iNaturalist app is also quite amazing for identification of all kinds of organisms by image. The also have the "Seek" app which identifies species even offline.
nkrisc
I use both apps, they’re pretty amazing. I typically use Seek first and if it can’t identify the image it lets you upload it to iNaturalist seamlessly for manual identification. I believe then those identifications are then used to further train the model.
nanidin
The Seek app is one of those things that you can show people and they think it is magic, even in this day and age. I got my mom and my grandma using it!
ses4j
Many enthusiasts and scientists are recording and identifying birds from nocturnal audio recordings. Some references:
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/NocturnalFlightCalls
- https://github.com/HaroldMills/Vesper
mycowerk
Very cool, thanks for the resources. Awesome rabbit hole to go down!
TheaomBen
I've been toying around with photogrammetrically matching in-flight bird silhouettes in order to have a plantnetlike bird classifier. Very much in the data acquisition stage but I'm seeing moderate success in clustering images by bird shape so far. In between other photogrammetry work I'm starting to think about how to use colour information and reading up on how to select and train a ML model for this problem.
jldl805
I don't know if you've ever photographed birds, but I suspect this would be difficult because shots that are detailed enough to make out enough detail would be tight in, and shots that covered a large patch of sky would not be detailed enough.
Just speculation though, I'm sure with enough resources these are surmountable issues... I'm just not sure what quantity of resources that is.
mycowerk
Yeh this was my initial concern with optical silhouette classification. The altitude and targets are quite small (and rapidly moving). I've thought about using optical flow analysis to track wingbeat frequency etc as I feel this might be a little simpler to acquire.
On wingbeat frequency I'm very curious to play around with mmWave doppler radar (there's some RF on chip stuff around), emitting a relatively isotropic signal might allow for a pretty wide field of view and I imagine you'd get a pretty reasonable wingbeat signal.
smackay
It would be very cool to have network of these listening to calls while birds are migrating at night. With a large enough network you'd get an amazing way to visualise large scale movements which are generally completely invisible. Wiring up the eastern seaboard around Massachusetts, southern Spain, the vast steppes around the Caspian Sea or pretty much anywhere else would be incredible.
ses4j
BirdNET isn't tuned particularly for nocturnal flight calls (NFCs). But a network of listening stations with automated identification exists and is improving rapidly. Vesper (https://github.com/HaroldMills/Vesper) is one open-source project. Terra (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theterraproject/listen-...) is also related.
tony_cannistra
Believe it or not, we already have a technology for nighttime bird migration monitoring: weather radar.
closedloop129
Radar for Europe: https://eurobirdportal.org/
This is made to compare two birds and their migration pattern over the last year.
Birds seem to have different radar signatures so that there is a different pattern for each bird.
b112
I can't find a single place, on that site, which mentions radar.
Instead, it talks about data from partners, sources, etc., and even mentions some of them as manual counts, overlapping, etc.
It just looks radar-ish, but is not.
mycowerk
Very cool! I wonder how unique the signatures are and whether this can scale to smaller flocks.
techterrier
BirdNET is ace, looking foward to building it into our app...Birda[0] (Strava for birdwatching). We are hiring too if any nature loving engineers want to work in conservation - dom@birda.org (need to be able to get to London once a fortnight)
Aaronstotle
I love hackernews because I come here to procrastinate and end in rabbit holes (was looking at getting a raspberry pi for this project), and now I found about this app!
I use strava all the time so that's a great description
rlf_dev
Hey, you guys are looking to implement BirdNET into iOS ? If so I have no problem sharing the code I'm using in a small app I made using BirdNET-Lite (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bird-sound-identifier/id154189...)
WelcomeShorty
Cool. Bought it and much to my surprise, it worked. Surprised since I live in a city, construction going on, motorcycles passing and still: it detected my beloved house sparrows :)
Will give it a shot later tonight when the noise pollution dies down and the birds get going.
rlf_dev
Thanks ! I'm now in the process of updating to the new 2022 model.
techterrier
that's great! I'll drop you an email
frontierkodiak
Oh, wow! I'm currently working on a sort of BirdNET for pollinators, and am super excited by the possibility of gamification for amping up participation in these citizen science projects. Strava, Pokemon Go, etc. provide an excellent model that folks in conservation can draw on, & this sort of large-scale data is just radically empowering for sample-size constrained ecologists. I'll be looking for work in a few months, but really don't want to abandon the conservation space-- I'll be in touch!
chrisweekly
App Store says Birda isn't available in my country or region. (USA). Hmm.
techterrier
yes, we have only soft launched in the UK and South Africa, US folks wanting a preview can email me dom@birda.org for a beta invite
CalRobert
Look for my CV in your inbox in the next day or two. (Based in Ireland and would rather avoid the emissions of flying, maybe a ferry option could work out though)
nathancahill
Cool. Do you integrate with eBird at all? I've done quite a bit of work in this field and would love to chat with you guys. Email in my profile.
techterrier
not yet, but will do soon!
onion2k
My hobby is bird photography. I'll definitely check your app out.
mongol
Birdwatching is so rewarding, I can really recommend it. It feels Real (TM) to go out and watch what happens in nature, live, with your own eyes. You get out, visit new places, practise your senses in ways you don't do otherwise, and are rewarded with new experiences.
Digory
Fun! What kind of microphone are they using on these installations?
In most of the US, I presume you could get a 6-12W solar panel to run a Raspberry Pi Zero basically uninterrupted in your yard.
SpikedCola
There are some mic suggestions discussed on the github page[0].
[0] https://github.com/mcguirepr89/BirdNET-Pi/discussions/39
Terry_Roll
Now if ever I wanted to spy on the neighbours whilst not spying on the neighbours, this is it! LOL
pedrogpimenta
I'm also interested in what microphone would work best for this project, which I absolutely will install on an unused Pi :)
0xbadcafebee
Is this really capable of live 24/7 local bird sound identification? That sounds like it could have a huuuuuuge effect on all kinds of things world-wide. Imagine real-time tracking of whether bird sounds are getting fewer and fewer, or tracking real time changes in bird song around the world due to climate change, or just specific species disappearing due to environmental factors. Or being able to push back on new development that harms local bird populations by measuring a reduction in song. The possibilities are endless!
kingsloi
Awesome! I've been eyeing up a Vizycam (https://vizycam.com) to do bird identification but via visual recognition. Sounds like this would be a great addition and would pair nicely with the Vizycam, both run on Pis, too!
mrbombastic
You may be aware of this in same space, they have delayed for quite a while but apparently just started production: https://mybirdbuddy.com
jcpst
Loving these turn-key Pi projects showing up on HN today.
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formerkrogemp
They are quite lovely.
codingdave
This looks terrific - I live next to a forest and have so many birds here, I was thinking of building such a tool myself. I'm definitely going to set some time aside in the next week or so to try this out.
jancsika
Is this limited to detecting sounds emanating from the cheapo DACs installed in all extant birds?
If so, it would be nice if they'd add a flag to analyze songs from the legacy birds heard in old recordings.
CalRobert
Thank you for sharing this!!!!
I have a few acres of grazing land that I've been letting go fallow and reforesting for a few years. I've wanted to track the arrival of different species (when will the swallows get here?) etc. and do bird counts over the years, but have always been too lazy to wire this up. This will be very useful!
fumblebee
A wonderful and colourful book on the subject of rewilding is: Wilding by Isabella Tree [1]. It's made me really want to do what you, she, and her husband, have done, though unfortunately my dank city flat lacks the sufficient acreage.
CalRobert
I've read about this person in the Guardian I think. Will have to check out the book. For what it's worth, I had a dank city flat, but moved to the place with acreage after getting tired of paying tons of rent to live near bars I could never go to after having a kid.
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Ooh! I have a mockingbird in my yard that I can try this on! I counted 20 different songs the other night, and it was probably a lot more, I just stopped being able to distinguish. They can have a repertoire of over 200! I was actually wondering if something like this project existed, or maybe just an app really, but then hadn't thought about it since (I'm just an insomniac, not a bird watcher). Very cool.
If you don't know about the North American mockingbird, they fly up to a high perch at night and claim a yard sized area of territory by reciting all the songs it knows, as loud as it can. Over and over again, until it is exhausted. The little psychos. Thus impressing all the lady mockingbirds in the area. Apparently they do a little dance as well, but given it's usually the middle of the night when this happens, I haven't seen it.
They used to drive me nuts until I read up on them. Now I try to count how many songs they know.