If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know that I love sitting on my deck watching and listening to my bird visitors. This time of year, the majority of the birds in my backyard are your typical “garden birds” – house finches, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, cardinals, mourning doves, robins, and woodpeckers. I’m used to the sounds they make and, honestly, don’t pay a whole lot of attention to them when I hear their call. However, there are those random times when I hear a bird call that I don’t recognize.
For instance, today I heard a Carolina Wren – a bird that I haven’t seen in my yard in over two years – but I didn’t know it was a Carolina Wren. I actually had no idea what bird I was hearing, but I knew I had a few apps on my phone that could likely help me out, as long as the wren kept calling out.
When it comes to recording bird calls, it’s imperative that you limit as much background noise as possible. For me, that means telling my family to be quiet for a few seconds so I could record what I was hearing. Another noise I try to avoid is other bird calls. Blue Jays seem to always be making noise around my yard and sometimes it’s quite difficult to pinpoint a single bird call. However, the plus side to many of these apps is that they will pick up multiple birds at once. If the app recognizes both a Blue Jay AND a House Finch, in most cases, both birds will be listed.
After a couple years of research and a lot of trial and error, I’ve found a few bird apps that I rely on to help me identify what bird I’m hearing. I’ve also discovered that utilizing a single app isn’t as beneficial as using multiple apps. I’m able to compare and contrast the results each app provides.
My go-to app for identifying bird calls is BirdNET, developed by biologists at both the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab for Ornithology and the Chemnitz University of Technology. The app is super easy to use and launches very quickly, ensuring you don’t miss the bird you’re hearing. Currently, the app can identify over 3,000 birds. It’s very accurate, even when there are other noises in the background. One of the things I like the most about BirdNET is the fact that it starts recording when you launch the app – you don’t have to push the record button – ensuring you get the best chance at capturing the bird call.
Another app I’m very fond of is Merlin Bird ID – designed for beginner and intermediate bird watchers by scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Caltech. This app is super useful, as it can identify birds by both sound and sight. When you launch the app, you can choose which identification option you want to use. The downside to this option is the risk of missing out on recording the bird call, as you have to select a few buttons before the app will start recording. However, it’s not an exclusive sound identification app.
Number three on my list is Song Sleuth, developed by Wildlife Accoustics, a leading provider of bioacoustics technology. I like this app for the simple fact that it’s an exclusive sound identification app, very similar to BirdNET. The reason I don’t place it higher on my list is because I don’t find it to be as accurate (the results in the last image below were 100% wrong). When you launch the app, the spectrogram begins playing. The only thing you have to do is hit the record button. When you are done recording, you simply hit the button again and the recording stops. The sounds are automatically highlighted and to generate the results, you choose Run ID. I’ve tested this app multiple times, trying not to make any noise and it still generates results of birds that weren’t even in the area. With that being said, when an obvious bird call is recorded, it gets the result right the majority of the time, it just struggles with background noise or multiple birds calling at once.
The reason I tend to use all three apps simultaneously is to ensure what I’m hearing is accurate. During bird migration, I hear many calls that aren’t familiar to me. By utilizing multiple apps, I can be 100% sure if what bird I’m hearing.
Here’s an example that happened just a few days ago. I was in my backyard listening to the birds as usual. It was early evening and I began hearing a bird that I didn’t recognize. After telling my family to shush for a moment, I opened BirdNET and started to record. The app told me what I was hearing was a Yellow-breasted Chat – a bird I’ve never seen or heard before. Luckily, the bird kept calling so I recorded it again using BirdNET and I got the same results. I decided to open up Merlin Bird ID to see what results I’d get. This time, the app came back with a Carolina Wren – obviously a very different result. What’s interesting here is that I had just recently seen a wren in my yard, but I was unable to decipher what species with my eyes, as it flew away shortly after I noticed it.
The point of all of this is that you’re never going to get 100% accuracy which is why I choose to utilize multiple apps for bird sound identification. This method gives me a much better indication of what bird I’m hearing. I’m able to compare and contrast the results and make an educated guess based on what each of the apps have told me. And because of what my eyes and the Merlin Bird ID app told me, my assumption is that I was hearing a Carolina Wren in my yard and not a yellow-breasted chat – even though BirdNET came back with the same result twice. Chances are, they have a similar sound at times, which is why the apps had differing results.
When I was new to birding, I was overwhelmed by all the information available to me so I hope this review was helpful for anyone who may be struggling to identify bird calls.
Until next time…
Allison, BRB