i’ve been using the identify-by-sound feature of this app and so far it’s been really impressive
Yeah, I use both the photo and sound ID features of Merlin, and while it’s not perfect and shouldn’t be “relied on” necessarily, it’s usually pretty accurate, and at least gives a good place to start for getting a proper ID. I keep meaning to see if their sound ID is in any way related to work I had done back in the 90s when I was at Cornell. I was working on a project for the Navy to identify whales and other marine life sounds, largely for their submarines.
Another app that I use a lot is iNaturalist, for both bird and non-bird IDs. It’ll give you a suggestion, and then it goes out for person/community-based review to confirm or change the ID.
Also note, for bird IDs, the American Birding Association has a FB group specifically for IDs. You post a photo and you get a bunch of experts tell you what it is. I’ve found that resource invaluable for IDs where I wasn’t sure. I don’t have a link to it where I am right now, but if you just search for something like What’s This Bird and ABA or something you should be able to find It.
And finally, back on the sound ID thing …. one thing I got recently that I’ve only *just* started playing with, so don’t have a lot of experience yet, is the Birdweather PUC. I ordered it back when it was a kickstarter, but I think it’s been properly released now. It’s a little device that you can either leave in “live” mode (which requires a WiFi connection) where it continuously listens and IDs birds, or you can put it in offline mode (e.g., while hiking, in the field, or anywhere there isn’t WiFi) and it records the sounds for later ID. It has built-in GPS and records where the IDs take place. The problem I often have with Merlin sound ID is that I’ll hear something and then pull out the phone to get an ID, but often it won’t make another call. Or I’ll be busy with the camera and trying to take a photo so don’t want to bother fumbling with my phone. So my hope was that with something continuously recording while I’m doing my own thing, when I got back home if I was unsure of an ID I could match up the timestamp and/or location of my photo with the recorded sound. I could also go back and review the sound IDs and maybe realize there were critters I missed and where I might want to look for them next time I go out.
In my limited experience so far with the Birdweather PUC, I find it’s about as good with the sound ID as Merlin (In fact I think it leverages the Merlin/Cornell infrastructure but I’m not 100% on that). And it seems to have worked well on the one hike I’ve taken with it and I’ve had it out on the porch the past couple days running in live mode too. I have some usability suggestions for them which I’ll submit, largely that it’s not easy to get to the location information for the offline recordings. At first it didn’t even seem possible, which I found frustrating. Then I found that there was a way to access that information online, but it’s just the GPS coordinates which you then have to copy-paste into google maps to see where it was.
