[HN Gopher] A beginner's guide to identifying birdsong
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A beginner's guide to identifying birdsong
Author : penguin_booze
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-12-13 13:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I'm in the upper Midwest and heard a pleasant owl "hooting" last
| night, but it was interspersed with just an awful squawk noise.
| My partner thought that other noise might be a juvenile owl, is
| that something others have heard of? I'll download that birdnet
| to see if they can confirm but it was just such a striking noise.
| cjaro wrote:
| Barred Owls can make a terrifying squawk/yell/howl noise!
| Juveniles will make the noises as well to call to their
| parents. I heard a family of 5 BAOW this past summer (also
| upper Midwest here) and got to observe them all communicating
| and the parents hunting around dusk. It was magical and I got
| to hear these owl calls in the wild.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I've definitely seen barred owls in the area, so I bet that
| was it. Thanks for the tip, magical is a great way to
| describe it. Actually turned off the TV / lights last night
| when we heard them calling and just sat in the dark and
| listened.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Nextdoor.com is great for this- the local wildlife threads on
| there are always so interesting. Turns out a lot of my
| neighbors are bird nerds and chances are yours might be hearing
| and maybe even have photos or webcam videos of the same owls.
|
| There's a giant thread over a pair of Golden Eagles that nested
| in a tree behind our house and raised three chicks. I was
| feeding sparrows & nuthatches on my deck and it made me wonder
| if I was just setting up a nice little prey bait station for
| the eagles as I noticed them circling overhead one day while
| doing yoga.
| nemo wrote:
| Maybe a screech owl?
| https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Screech-Owl/soun...
|
| Barred owl calls also can be a bit squawky/jarring:
| https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/sounds
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I bet it was a barred owl from what I've been reading -- not
| exactly like anything on that sounds page but similar enough
| I think they're related.
| gadders wrote:
| Cheat and install Bird Net: https://birdnet.cornell.edu/ works
| amazingly well. And once you have the song identified once, you
| can recognise it again.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Thanks for that. Looking forward to trying it out. Do you - or
| anyone else - know of similarly useful apps for appreciating
| and/or learning more about nature?
|
| Living in Ireland, I've found the _BritishTrees_ app from the
| Woodland Trust to be useful for identifying trees and the
| _Night Sky_ app for celestial objects.
|
| Being restricted to a 2km/5km limit over the past couple of
| years gave me a much greater appreciation for the more subtle
| aspects of local flora and fauna. I can now recognise by sight
| many more bird species than I would have been able to 2 years
| ago.
| RobinL wrote:
| 'Seek' by iNaturalist is really good. Point your phone camera
| at an animal or plant, and it'll try to ID it
| eulers_secret wrote:
| I've been using anki flash cards to learn birds in my local
| area. It works really well, in a few weeks I could identify a
| few score different birds.
|
| I've also used Anki to learn some plants and insects.
|
| Also, if you Reddit, subscribe to r/whatisthisbird (along
| with whatisthisbug and r/birding), and every day you'll learn
| birds and bugs. I also do this with artwork as my random
| desktop background. I see it every day, so I can now
| recognize some paintings. I put no effort into learning,
| they're just there and I pick it up passively! Should work
| with pics of birds.
| gcr wrote:
| How do you use anki for birding? Do you study birdsong or
| are you learning visually?
| randycupertino wrote:
| was it a premade deck, or did you build it yourself? I've
| used Anki for school, would be interesting to try for
| wildlife.
| quercusa wrote:
| I've found PictureThis to be great for identifying plants.
| They claim to cover 100+ countries. There's a premium version
| but I just opt out by hitting the Cancel button at top right
| of the screen. It's been able to ID plants from photos other
| people have taken (pointing at their phone).
| nemo wrote:
| I'd recommend taking a look at iNaturalist:
| https://www.inaturalist.org/home
|
| When you post observations, their AI does a great (though not
| perfect) job of identifying species. Works really well for
| birds, butterflies, does a generally good job on plants (tip:
| if it's flowering get the flower in the photo), and also is
| good with many wild mammals if you can get a decent photo.
| Not so good for many beetles, fungi, moss and other species
| where a photo's not really adequate for id. You post
| observations with time and location they have a map you can
| explore in many ways, and also there's an 'Explore' option
| that lets you see what wildlife are being reported in your
| area or an area you choose to explore.
|
| Also the data from those observations is used by scientific
| researchers, so by using it you're contributing to citizen
| science.
|
| edit to add: also it's free
| gadders wrote:
| I'm not sold on the plant ones. I saw a long thread on
| instagram of a botanist rubbishing on of the "recognise a
| plant via a photo" apps. I wish I could remember which one it
| was...
|
| Bird Net has never let me down though (in Europe at least -
| not tried further afield).
| cjaro wrote:
| eBird, iBird Pro (UK), BirdNet, Merlin, PlantNet, and
| iNaturalist are my go-to apps for general outdoors adventures
| and casual walks. I like snapping pictures and posting on
| iNaturalist because the community and citizen scientists will
| help you ID birds, reptiles, plants, flowers, insects, etc.
| iBird is great for bird ID from pictures and a library of
| sounds.
|
| The pandemic also brought more awareness of my local flora
| and fauna for me as well.
| mongol wrote:
| Agreed. This is the single most useful tool to learn bird song.
| clavicat wrote:
| Birds can't sing for shit. When's the last time a birdsong got
| stuck in your head?
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Prairie Warbler, White Eyed Vireo and Wood Thrush songs stick
| in my head
| randycupertino wrote:
| We have a lot of California towhees in the ridge behind my
| house and they make a cute singular loud "Theet!" chirp that is
| distinctive and cheerful. For the first year of living here
| before I figured out what they were actually called, I just
| nicknamed them "The Theet Birds." They're fun to watch, they
| hop back and forth to dig up dirt for bugs with their feet and
| run all over the place making little trails through the bush.
| rcv wrote:
| We have housefinches and white crowned sparrows in my
| neighborhood, and both have really distinctive calls that get
| stuck in my head all the time. The housefinches sound like
| they're ripping a Van Halen riff, and the sparrows sound like
| they're singing the chorus to that TI/Young Dro song "Shoulder
| Lean".
| Exmoor wrote:
| Not stuck in my head the same as a song, but after a day
| birding I'll have things like Pacific-Slope Flycatcher or Red
| Crossbill calls stuck in my head.
| djaychela wrote:
| That doesn't mean they can't sing. It means their songwriter's
| not that good.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| If you've never heard a wood thrush, you're missing out on
| something incredible. Its ethereal songs are so highly refined
| and wonderfully layered that they sound almost electronic. They
| are sublime. Of the wood thrush, America's favorite naturalist
| philosopher Henry Thoreau wrote, "This is the only bird whose
| note affects me like music. It lifts and exhilarates me. It is
| inspiring. It changes all hours to an eternal morning." Living
| in the woods, I'm fortunate to hear them often (though I almost
| never see one). Every time one sings nearby it stops me in my
| tracks.
| clort wrote:
| There was I think a nightingale hanging around in a copse
| near me for a couple of weeks last autumn. It was so
| amazingly clear and liquid at 3am I didn't even mind being
| woken up.
| Angostura wrote:
| The screaming pihah when I lioved in the Perivian rainforest
| for a while.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Via my kid, I learned what a hummingbird call sounds like. It's a
| great experience to hear a call and be able to look around and
| find one. (I hear them quite frequently and they're pretty easy
| to spot).
| techterrier wrote:
| Great to see so much interest with birding these days - we've
| soft launched our MVP of 'Strava for Birdwatching'* UK/EU only
| atm, but people stateside can email me dom@birda.org for an
| invite
|
| https://birda.org/
| gcr wrote:
| A sister team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology also has a app
| called "Merlin," which can automatically identify birds by
| picture or sound. BirdNET feels targeted towards folks doing
| bioacoustics research while Merlin is focused around education
| and outreach. Merlin's Sound ID is fairly accurate and it can
| identify (recorded or live) bird calls from your phone's
| microphone! https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/sound-id/
|
| Lately I've been teaching myself bird calls from custom-built
| Anki flashcards (I can't see well, so learning to bird by sight
| is less interesting to me than birding by ear). Having an easy
| way of "checking my work" in the wild really helps me feel
| confident about learning the birds in my neighborhood.
| rcv wrote:
| That's a great idea - do you mind sharing your flashcard deck?
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