Smart Birding

A new birdsong app identifies feathered friends by their tweets

By Chris Barncard

Squinting into windblown trees and bushes is for the birds—especially if it’s birds you’re looking for.

“You have to listen. There’s no way around it,” says Mark Berres (photo right), an ornithologist and CALS animal science professor. “The most difficult aspect of bird-watching is call identification, but calls are the most important tool for identifying birds.”

Even experienced birders have trouble matching more than a handful of songs with species, but Berres may have answered the prayers of bird-watchers, researchers and even the most casual naturalist.

Not surprisingly, salvation comes in the form of a smartphone app: WeBIRD, the Wisconsin Electronic Bird Identification Resource Database.

WeBIRD users can record a nearby bird’s call, submit that song wirelessly to a server and retrieve a positive ID of the species.

“I am amazed at how good it is,” says Berres, who also has used WeBIRD to identify grasshopper species by their clicks and frogs by their croaks. “Not only can WeBIRD tell you which species you’re hearing—in some cases it’s good enough to identify individual birds from their song.”

That’s no mean feat. Birdcalls can differ throughout the day, among groups just miles apart, and by individual birds.

“When a bird sings, the song itself may have varying amplitudes and frequencies,” Berres says. “It can also speed up a little bit and slow down a little bit. They may throw in a note here or take out a
note there.”

WeBIRD dices songs into time-ordered chunks, using data-organization techniques often applied by geneticists to jumbled bits of DNA to “align temporally misaligned data, working around a lot of the variation,” says Berres.

Berres expects WeBIRD—which could be available to the public in time for the 2012 spring migration—will enable field research through remote recording and analysis. More important, he hopes WeBIRD will help birds.

“If people can appreciate intrinsic beauty—and birds have got that part down—a closer awareness of the natural world will follow,” says Berres. “Fostering a connection with wildlife is one of the ways we’re going to save it, and WeBIRD puts that connection to birds in the palm of your hand.”

Click here to watch a WeBIRD demonstration with Mark Berres.

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Posted in Around the college, Environment, Fall 2011, On Henry Mall | 9 Comments »

9 Responses to “Smart Birding”

  1. Posted by: rick buie | February 21st, 2012 at 2:58 pm

    What a great tool, especially for we neophyte bird watchers. Birding is a great pastime and this app will speed up the learning curve.

    WeBIRD is a great idea!

  2. Posted by: Ben Allen | February 29th, 2012 at 6:41 am

    When first seeing Shazaam work to identify music and being a birder I leapt to the idea that maybe that technology could work for identifying birds. No idea how to do it, but I’m glad to see Dr. Berres has created WeBird. I’m hopeful that the program will also have location data when using it because theoretically it could harness thousands of birders to create time, location, and bird data to provide an unparalleled research tool. That could be part of the deal, no? YOu get this free app to id birds and the data is sent back to Dr. Berres. Over in Iowa (mostly with the same birds as Wisconsin) I eagerly await access. When will it be available?

  3. Posted by: Mark E. Berres | February 29th, 2012 at 9:15 am

    Hi Ben,

    Thank you very much for your comments which reflect exactly my intentions with WeBIRD. What you are describing is technically called “crowd-sourcing” and has already been used to solve computationally intractable problems, often through playing a game designed to engage participants. I envision similar types of uses for WeBIRD especially with regards to species identification, learning, and data collection. The use of WeBIRD by birdwatchers (citizen scientists) – of which there are tens of millions in the US alone – would provide unprecedented access to huge amounts of data that no professional could ever hope to acquire. I believe that automatic recognition technologies such as WeBIRD will have significant impact on how the public interacts with and perceives the natural environment, strange as it may sound (it is based on an idea that people only care about what they know). The target audience of WeBIRD is broad, ranging from amateur bird watchers, educators, and natural resource organizations to professional researchers. As such, WeBIRD is capable of playing an important role in the growing field of citizen science which requires accurate species identification. This better serves scientists and increases awareness among participants of the pressures facing birds and bird habitats: it will foster a connection with the environment. Originally, I had considered releasing WeBIRD this spring, but had no way to support the computational infrastructure required. The technology is being patented and WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) is negotiating with potential investor support. Realistically – probably sometime next year.
    Sincerely,
    Mark

  4. Posted by: Juha | April 29th, 2012 at 1:34 am

    Any further news on this yet? Is there some way to subscribe and get to know when the app becomes available? Can’t wait!

  5. Posted by: Mark E. Berres | May 1st, 2012 at 6:41 am

    Hi Juha,

    Thank you for your message. Right now, WeBIRD is not available for public use. However, I am taking the necessary steps to create a release that will be ready for spring next year. As our first release will be for iOS, just check the AppStore from time-to-time.

    Sincerely,
    Mark

  6. Posted by: Jackie | May 5th, 2012 at 1:49 am

    Mark – I look forward to this app. I’ve forgotten most of the calls and songs I learned years ago, and I know this will help me relearn them. What range will be included in this app? Will Eastern birds be included? Do you mind if I ask a related question? So many birds near me start up just before dawn while it is still dark. I have my hunches but why do they start then? It’s lovely, but do they detect dawn before we can see it? Others wait until it is light.

  7. Posted by: Jackie | May 5th, 2012 at 1:52 am

    I noticed the time on my Comment. Of course it is 5:49 here, and I’d like to eavesdrop on the conversation outside. :-) Best of luck with your app.

  8. Posted by: Annie | May 5th, 2012 at 9:53 am

    Awesome– Heard the story of this on NPR– can’t wait to get the app. The orioles, evening gross beaks and indigo buntings are back and I’m hearing some bird song I don’t know— next spring is so long to wait!

    Thank you from Wisconsin.

  9. Posted by: Peter | May 11th, 2012 at 12:07 pm

    I went looking for Such an app today while sitting in my back yard listening to the birds around me and thought. “there has to be an app for that”! You hit the nail on the head with music ID, the technology is out there. Unless you patent the idea to make some profit from there is no reason why this app could not be put together in a month by that same company with a known database of sound files and associated picture and text data.
    Most people like myself would be happy to buy the app for a few dollars eliminating the need for grass roots fundraising..
    My suggestion would be to patent the idea, sell it to music ID let them develop the app in exchange for access to the data and a modest share of the profit.
    They should be happy to have you on board with your credentials and background being one of the main selling points of this scientific tool!
    Finally! A really worthwhile use for all of this supercomputing power we walk around with every day, put to use for something greater than “name that tune”
    Good luck professor!
    This is a worthy endeavor!

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