Skip to content
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About Our Staff
    • About Our Board
    • Our Commitment to Diversity
    • GGAS Code of Conduct
    • Job Opportunities
    • GGAS in the News
    • Strategic Plan
    • Annual Report
  • Upcoming Events
  • Blog
  • Osprey Cam
  • Contact Us
    • Join/Renew
    • Donate
    • Other Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
    • Member Login
    • Corporate Partnerships
    • Violation Report
Golden Gate Audubon Society
Golden Gate Audubon Society
  • Education
    • Speaker Series
      • Past Speakers
    • Eco-Ed for Kids
    • Adult Education Classes
    • Rotary Nature Center
  • Conservation
    • Conservation Info
    • Bird-Friendly Coffee Club
  • Volunteer
  • Bird With Us
    • Field Trips
    • Travel with GGAS
    • SF Bay Ospreys
    • Birding Sites
    • Birding Resources
    • Christmas Bird Counts
      • CBC Feeder Watchers
    • The Gull
    • Golden Gate Birder Blog
  • Archives
    • Trip Reports by Year
    • Past Speakers
    • The Gull Archives
    • GGAS Press Releases
    • Travel with GGAS – Past Tours
  • Donate
  • Join
Golden Gate Audubon Society
  • Education
    • Speaker Series
      • Past Speakers
    • Eco-Ed for Kids
    • Adult Education Classes
    • Rotary Nature Center
  • Conservation
    • Conservation Info
    • Bird-Friendly Coffee Club
  • Volunteer
  • Bird With Us
    • Field Trips
    • Travel with GGAS
    • SF Bay Ospreys
    • Birding Sites
    • Birding Resources
    • Christmas Bird Counts
      • CBC Feeder Watchers
    • The Gull
    • Golden Gate Birder Blog
  • Archives
    • Trip Reports by Year
    • Past Speakers
    • The Gull Archives
    • GGAS Press Releases
    • Travel with GGAS – Past Tours
  • Donate
  • Join
 

Birding by Ear with help from AI

  • July 20, 2021

By Margot Bezrutczyk

I’ll probably never know what it was: the bird that sang such complex, liquid song in the thicket of bay laurel that morning on Bolinas Ridge. I tried and failed to come up with a mnemonic, resorting to simile: “It sounds like an Ewok and a robot fighting. It sounds like a computer drowning.” I climbed up some fallen branches hanging off the trail in an attempt to see the bird, but several crows and a wren joined the chorus and began scolding me. I was brand-new to bird identification, armed only with my field guide and binoculars, birding alone during the pandemic, and eventually I simply had to walk away. I found birding in the woods both exhilarating and frustrating, because it was so difficult for a beginner to even know what to listen for.

Then I discovered BirdNET.

BirdNET is a sound ID app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. I’ve been a bit of an evangelist for BirdNET since I started using it, and I was happy to see that similar artificial-intelligence (AI) technology has recently been integrated into the Merlin app as a “Sound ID” feature.

Both apps are free, and both work by recording spectrograms of the sounds detected by your phone. The spectrogram—a visual representation of audio frequency and signal strength or “loudness”—is processed through a neural network that returns one or more predictions based on both the spectrogram and your location. A sound may represent multiple bird species, which the app can identify simultaneously.

You have the option to share your recordings with Cornell’s Macaulay Library, where they’ll be used to improve the quality of IDs in the future. I usually don’t do this because because many of my recordings end with something like, “…it’s just a f*∆king squirrel, again.”

Shortly after downloading BirdNET, I held up my phone towards the cacophony of an oak woodland one April morning, and finally begin to distinguish signal from noise. The first test: I was able to determine that a certain call I’d been hearing for weeks was the song of a Wrentit, an untrustworthy-looking little grey bird I’d seen in my Sibley book and longed to lay eyes on: It was right here all along!

With an idea of what to look for, it wasn’t long before I was able to spot the Wrentit and learn its song by heart. Being able to view the spectrogram in real time makes memorizing vocalizations that much easier.

Wrentit
Wrentit by Larry Hollowood

I have found Merlin’s Sound ID to be remarkably accurate as long as the signal is clear. Predictably enough, the algorithm doesn’t do well in areas with a lot of human activity, and if the sound is faint or background noise high, some spurious results may be returned.

Which brings us to the controversy: Will birders suddenly start adding all kinds of wild sightings on eBird based on predictions from the app? Some have suggested that eBirders should write “sound ID by Merlin” or “ID assisted by Merlin” in a note if they opt to add it to the eBird database.  Personally, if I am unsure about the call and rely on Merlin or BirdNET, I don’t include that sighting on an eBird list. I’d use that information to try to actually spot the bird and attune my ear more closely in the future.

There are a few meaningful differences between the two Cornell Lab of Ornithology sound ID apps. BirdNET has a few advantages: Currently it features 984 species of North American and European birds, while Merlin supports about 450 and works in North America only, though this may change in the future.

 

Similar speed and accuracy, but slightly different interfaces. BirdNET (left) returns quality scores that can help birders decide to trust an ID, while Merlin’s Sound ID (right) automatically returns the most likely species once the AI has enough information to make an ID.
Screenshot of Merlins' Sound ID
Screenshot of Merlin’s Sound ID

With BirdNET, you can select the region of the spectrogram that best represents the sound you’re trying to identify, and importantly, it returns a quality score for its prediction that will help birders decide how much to trust the ID. On the other hand, Merlin’s Sound ID makes it easy to submit audio files you have previously recorded on your phone with any other sound recording app, and unlike BirdNET, works offline—though offline ID seems to be significantly slower.

Holger Klinck, one of the researchers working on BirdNET, says, “Fundamentally, both apps are using similar deep neural network approaches. One difference is that the Merlin’s [Sound ID] algorithm is exclusively trained with data hosted by the Macaulay Library. BirdNET uses additional (non-Cornell) data sources.”

Klinck adds, “We are working on a paper that looks at the spatial distribution of a variety of songbird dialects. This research couldn’t be done without all of your [birders’] great contributions.”

Though I have not personally performed a side-by-side comparison with other bird vocalization ID apps, others have, with the results resoundingly in favor of BirdNET. (However, Merlin’s Sound ID feature was not available at the time and not included in those comparisons.)

I expect experienced birders may find the Merlin and BirdNET sound ID apps amusing, or use them for an occasional second opinion about a distantly-heard call. But for those of us who are new to learning birdsong, they are an indispensable tool. I may never know who was singing on Bolinas Ridge that morning, but next time I’m bewildered by a song, I’ll be ready.


Margot Bezrutczyk is a plant biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National lab, where she studies root-microbe interactions. She is also interested in biodiversity of California native plants and birds, and loves sharing her passion for the natural world with others.

PrevPreviousTwo weeks on the Farallones
NextRe-nest SuccessNext
Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter

Follow Golden Gate Birder by email

Click to follow our blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Subscribe

Loading...
Q&A with Wildlife Photographer Peter Shen
July 28, 2022
Behind a Winning Shot
July 21, 2022
How to See Nesting California Least Terns and their Chicks
July 6, 2022
On Naming Individual Birds
June 28, 2022
How Many Birds Can Be Found in the Bay Area in One Day?
June 20, 2022
The Birds and The Beavers
June 1, 2022
Come for the Birds, Stay for the Chocolate
May 25, 2022
Birding Travel in Covid Year Three
May 23, 2022
Saved by a Pigeon
May 3, 2022
Annie + Grinnell 4EVA
April 8, 2022

Our Mission

The Golden Gate Audubon Society engages people to experience the wonder of birds and to translate that wonder into actions which protect native bird populations and their habitats.

Home page photo of an Anna’s Hummingbird by Parham Pourahmad. Home page photos rotate on an occasional basis. If you have a Bay Area bird photo you would like us to consider, email us at rnakano@goldengateaudubon.org.

Home page bird illustrations by Tex Buss. We are grateful for her generous donation of time and talent!

Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter

Contact Us

Golden Gate Audubon
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite G
Berkeley, California 94702

Phone: 510.843.2222

Office hours: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. to 12 noon, or by appointment

The Golden Gate Audubon Society  is a
not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Our federal tax ID number is 94-6086896

Manage your GGAS account online

Now you can manage all your GGAS business online — renew your membership, update your contact information, view past donations, or sign up for events such as classes, Birdathon or the Christmas Bird Count. Click here to access your account. (You’ll need to create a login name and password if you don’t have one already. If you forget your password, click on the “forgot your password” link.) You can also sign up for our new GGAS Chat to get updates on trips, talk with other members, and more!

© 2022 Golden Gate Audubon Society | All Rights Reserved
All photos on this site belong to the photographers and may not be used without written permission.
  • About Us
    • About Our Staff
    • About Our Board
    • Job Opportunities
    • Our Commitment to Diversity
    • GGAS StrategicPlan
    • GGAS in the News
  • Education
    • Speaker Series
      • Past Speakers
    • Eco-Ed for Kids
    • Adult Education Classes
    • Rotary Nature Center
  • Conservation
    • Conservation Info
    • Bird-Friendly Coffee Club
  • Volunteer
  • Bird With Us
    • Field Trip Information
    • Travel with GGAS
    • SF Bay Ospreys
    • Birding Resources
    • Christmas Bird Counts
    • The Gull
    • Golden Gate Birder Blog
    • Birdathon 2021
    • Corporate Partnerships
    • Member Login
  • GGAS Archives
    • Trip Reports by Year
    • Past Speakers
    • The Gull Archives
    • GGAS Press Releases
    • Travel with GGAS – Past Tours
  • Contact Us
    • Join/Renew
    • Other Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
    • Member Login
    • Volunteer Hours Reporting
  • Blog
  • Donate