I'm friends with some of the researchers on the Sound ID portion of this app! The team's gone to great lengths to make sure the machine learning models and evals are solid.
Under the hood, Sound ID is a great example of how "domain-expert-driven" careful research can give more reliable results than just feeding in data and hoping for the best.
In general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it.
There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.
I've been birdwatching (birding?) actively for a few years now, but only this year did I start using these sound identifiers. What a boon it's been! I've already spotted over a dozen new species by sound alone, and also learned to identify some of them by myself.
It really has opened up a whole new venue of enjoying this hobby. At least here, machine learning/AI has a clear, positive impact.
I was visiting Yosemite a year-ish ago and a guide recommended this app and it was fantastic. My kids also loved getting the real-time info on what they were hearing, and trying to spot the various kinds of birds.
Strongly recommend it (though admittedly, I don't use it often in suburbia)
I never thought I would ever actively watch for birds when I hear them. Or that I would be able to say "this is clearly a Wren". Or that I have a my favourite bird (Wren as well btw).
I won Merlin once. I didn't know you could win the game, but I was relaxing in my backyard and suddenly it notified me that I had found the merlin. I was so excited. I hadn't known that a merlin was a kind of bird.
I do wonder how accurate Merlin is. I certainly can't tell the bird calls apart, and I don't usually spot the bird in question, so it could just be lying to me half the time, and I'd probably never notice. But I sure do love the app as an amateur bird-liker.
I love this app!! This and iSeek (plant/animal identification via photos) are a blast. Lived in the jungle in souteast Mexico the last couple years and I'm constantly reaching for these.
We have a Mockingbird in our backyard (or more precisely, we live in his/her territory) that impersonates a Gila woodpecker. We were able to record it. Playing back the video and using Bird ID actually shows it as a Gila Woodpecker.
Note that the recent iOS update seems to have introduced a bug whereby even after stopping recording, the app in the background will continue to use SIGNIFICANT battery life, so I've needed to start force-closing the app after using it.
I identified a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-whiskered_bulbul in our garden thanks to this amazing app! Me and my wife love birding and at the end of the year we compare our scores, it is playful entertainment. And we are introducing our daughter to it, it is so cute when she identifies one!
Merlin is far less capable in developing countries either because there’s less available crowdsourced data, or it’s intentionally suppressed to reduce its use by unskilled poachers
Fantastic app. My wife and I are gradually becoming able to recognise more and more birds by their call. This is great because the human ear is better than the app at rejecting environmental noise – so we can spot birds by their call even close to a noisy road when the app cannot.
The app, at least on my Pixel 6, struggles with very high frequency calls – e.g. long-tailed tits.
> Sound ID is trained on audio recordings that are first converted to visual representations (spectrograms), then analyzed using computer vision tools similar to those that power Photo ID.
Yeah, the spectrogram scrolling by at the top isn't just a cute gimmick, that's actually how the recognition works…
Wonderful app! Collecting birds is great fun and another fun use is to try and fool it by making my own bird noises and see if I can pass. Red-tailed hawk is my speciality. I can fool it ≈50% of the time once I’m warmed up.
I’ve used this app for a while, it’s really good and I’d highly recommend it if you want to learn more about the birds where you live in an accessible way.
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25 Comments
andsoitis
Great app. One improvement I'd like is that if you play back sounds from the app you are allowed to cast the sound to an external speaker. I cannot.
NAHWheatCracker
I was wondering what kind of bird was chirping outside my window this morning. I should have had this app.
gcr
I'm friends with some of the researchers on the Sound ID portion of this app! The team's gone to great lengths to make sure the machine learning models and evals are solid.
Under the hood, Sound ID is a great example of how "domain-expert-driven" careful research can give more reliable results than just feeding in data and hoping for the best.
AnotherGoodName
In general as a bird watcher i’ve been extremely impressed by this tech. I generally trust it.
There’s only a couple of times i’ve been sceptical of it’s id and thats where there’s similar species in the area. Eg. I’m not convinced there really is a purple finch where i live when all i see is house finches all day. But i could be wrong too! It’s proven itself enough that i’m not ready to call it wrong on that one.
Mossy9
I've been birdwatching (birding?) actively for a few years now, but only this year did I start using these sound identifiers. What a boon it's been! I've already spotted over a dozen new species by sound alone, and also learned to identify some of them by myself.
It really has opened up a whole new venue of enjoying this hobby. At least here, machine learning/AI has a clear, positive impact.
jedc
I was visiting Yosemite a year-ish ago and a guide recommended this app and it was fantastic. My kids also loved getting the real-time info on what they were hearing, and trying to spot the various kinds of birds.
Strongly recommend it (though admittedly, I don't use it often in suburbia)
waetsch
Love this app.
I never thought I would ever actively watch for birds when I hear them. Or that I would be able to say "this is clearly a Wren". Or that I have a my favourite bird (Wren as well btw).
CobrastanJorji
I won Merlin once. I didn't know you could win the game, but I was relaxing in my backyard and suddenly it notified me that I had found the merlin. I was so excited. I hadn't known that a merlin was a kind of bird.
I do wonder how accurate Merlin is. I certainly can't tell the bird calls apart, and I don't usually spot the bird in question, so it could just be lying to me half the time, and I'd probably never notice. But I sure do love the app as an amateur bird-liker.
temp0826
I love this app!! This and iSeek (plant/animal identification via photos) are a blast. Lived in the jungle in souteast Mexico the last couple years and I'm constantly reaching for these.
OptionOfT
We have a Mockingbird in our backyard (or more precisely, we live in his/her territory) that impersonates a Gila woodpecker. We were able to record it. Playing back the video and using Bird ID actually shows it as a Gila Woodpecker.
hydroweaver87
iNaturalist is yet another nice app
pixelesque
Note that the recent iOS update seems to have introduced a bug whereby even after stopping recording, the app in the background will continue to use SIGNIFICANT battery life, so I've needed to start force-closing the app after using it.
WCSTombs
I'm a little disappointed that the photo on the landing page isn't, you know, a merlin [1].
[1] https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/merlin/id
ainiriand
I identified a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-whiskered_bulbul in our garden thanks to this amazing app! Me and my wife love birding and at the end of the year we compare our scores, it is playful entertainment. And we are introducing our daughter to it, it is so cute when she identifies one!
podlp
Merlin is far less capable in developing countries either because there’s less available crowdsourced data, or it’s intentionally suppressed to reduce its use by unskilled poachers
michaelmior
BirdNET-PI[0] may be of interest to this crowd. It uses a Raspberry Pi with a microphone to identify birds continuously based on their calls.
[0] https://www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi
sgarman
I was thinking of trying to run this at home: https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go
camillomiller
Used it a couple of nights ago to find out that here in Berlin we have a massive Nightingale population
urban_winter
Fantastic app. My wife and I are gradually becoming able to recognise more and more birds by their call. This is great because the human ear is better than the app at rejecting environmental noise – so we can spot birds by their call even close to a noisy road when the app cannot.
The app, at least on my Pixel 6, struggles with very high frequency calls – e.g. long-tailed tits.
My best spot yet? A nightingale in Wimbledon.
eichin
Of interest:
> Sound ID is trained on audio recordings that are first converted to visual representations (spectrograms), then analyzed using computer vision tools similar to those that power Photo ID.
Yeah, the spectrogram scrolling by at the top isn't just a cute gimmick, that's actually how the recognition works…
rjim86
I recently found this app and I'm loving it. I actively use this when i go for walk, hike and camping. Thanks team for the amazing work
leland
Wonderful app! Collecting birds is great fun and another fun use is to try and fool it by making my own bird noises and see if I can pass. Red-tailed hawk is my speciality. I can fool it ≈50% of the time once I’m warmed up.
Arbortheus
I’ve used this app for a while, it’s really good and I’d highly recommend it if you want to learn more about the birds where you live in an accessible way.
barrenko
Beautiful functional website, I got hooked from that last woodpecker post that ended up on HN.
lloydatkinson
It’s great to see it works globally and not just in America