Recognizing birds, by sound, at scale

December 16, 2023 4:01 PM

"BirdWeather is a visualization platform that... is continuously listening to over 200 active audio stations around the world and is actively plotting their results in a user-friendly map interface. We built BirdWeather to be a living library of bird vocalizations accessible to users via online map tools." You can explore top stations, top species (I'm not sure 'engine' is a species), or just watch the data come in via live updates. [via, via]
posted by jessamyn (11 comments total)

WHOA.

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

I love the fact that on the main page, the Top Species reflects the visible part of the map - so the species and counts change as you zoom in or out, or pan elsewhere.

And oh WOW - on the Data Explorer page, you can search by species (looks like most of the California Quail detections are in Paradise CA), and then LISTEN TO THE BIT OF AUDIO.

And it's so cool to be able to use that data page for an indicator of ... rarity? or quietness? There's only one detection of a Brown Pelican in the past month, but it's true they don't really vocalize a lot.

And then each bird has links to Wikipedia and eBird so you can see more photos and find out more about behaviors and habitat and delightful peculiarities.

This is just stupendously, stupendously cool.

And clicking to see who's behind it, turns out it's BirdNET at Cornell Lab, of course. They do SO MUCH fantastic stuff not just for dedicated bird lovers, but also for very casual, accidental bird lovers like me.

This is fabulous. Thank you so very much for posting this, jessamyn!
posted by kristi at 4:20 PM on December 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

this is too many kinds of awesome.
posted by not_on_display at 4:22 PM on December 16, 2023

Really cool.
posted by Splunge at 4:32 PM on December 16, 2023

Now this is a neat example of IoT!
posted by bouvin at 4:40 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thank you so very much for posting this, jessamyn!

Sure! I was posting the results of my Christmas Bird Count day to Mastodon and someone mentioned this and I had the same feeling: WOW.
posted by jessamyn at 4:56 PM on December 16, 2023

I have been waiting to do this (with a BirdPi) until I can find a good container to house it during New England outdoor weather. But the minute I do....
posted by wenestvedt at 7:13 PM on December 16, 2023

Mrs. Ecco and I installed two stations, one is station #1718 at the High Park Nature Centre in Toronto. The nearby tennis court often counts balls being struck as wild Turkeys, but it gets many more species correct. It is mentioned in some programs run there, and neat to check now and again.
posted by ecco at 9:12 PM on December 16, 2023

Mod note: [btw, this has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:24 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

How long until a startup uses this to serve targeted ads to birds?
posted by clawsoon at 8:16 AM on December 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I did read this in tandem with the "they are always listening" post and I did wonder....
posted by jessamyn at 8:19 AM on December 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I got my station up and running. People can, I think, listen to my birds or at least see what they are.
posted by jessamyn at 11:37 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]