Coming: Early spring 2026, Niiharu Citizen Forest

 

Last week, Yokohama was cold. The temperature was around 8°C at best. Greens around us on street looked bleak … This weekend, the highest temperature has reached 14 or 15°C in the North Forest of Yokohama. Finally?

Tadpoles started swimming in Niiharu.

Spring ephemeral, Wind flowers now have florets.

This is also Spring ephemeral, Carex conica Boott.

Yellow avalanche lilies show their buds.

This time of the year,
Pertya scandens have pretty popping plumules.

In Niiharu,
there are lot of trees of Early stachyurus,
Japanese native.
But those receiving lots of sunshine open first.
Flowers are honest.

I think this year
Orychophragmus violaceus flower earlier than violets.
They came from China about 300 years ago.
I heard in China they are vegetable.
Here, we normally don’t eat them.

Er …
chestnuts at the tip of a tree remain there as such …

Fritillaria verticillata var. thunbergii open its flowers now.
They are the first comers for flowering
in early spring and become dormant in late May.

Spring is coming honestly, I feel. But like the very short autumn last year it could end quickly. When the cherry blossoms are gone, Yokohama might jump into hot summer … global warming. Let us see.

Sawtooth oaks have new buds now.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712 

FAX: 045-550-4093

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp

Merlin in Japan, March 2026: the new age of bird watching III

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr TAX! … So sorry skipping last week for telling my forest adventure with AI. Anyway, this week is for my impression from Merlin in the nearby forests. First, you download the App from Apple Store or Google Play Store on your cellphone. To use the apps fully, please create your account in eBird and tell Merlin you’ll use your eBird account for Merlin. (More to it later.) And don’t forget you keep logging in both eBird and Merlin when you bird-watch with these two AI app. The starting page of Merlin would look like this (Sorry, in Japanese again).

The three icons in the middle of the page tell you the options we can choose to identify a bird somewhere near. From the left,

The icon is to identify bird (single or plural) with flow-chart. You report where you find this bird (address, or GPS data your cellphone report), time (calendar and time the cellphone report to the system), and, if you can see the bird, the size, the most prominent color of it, and finally the activity the bird is doing. When you report them, and tap Next, Merlin replies back the possible candidates based on your saying like this

A part of the list from my reporting.
I saw Brown-eared bulbul and
Merlin reported back this.
An apparent mistake.

When none of the suggestions fit your sighting, Merlin gives you opportunities to adjust your reporting at the end of the suggestion page, like this

They are the items you reported.
Maybe the size I told Merlin was not exact …

You continue this exercise until you’re sure the bird you’re watching is “This,” just like searching in the pages of reference books. If you think none matches of your finding in the end, you click the bar (directed by the red arrow in above photo), and AI will remember the problem which will be utilized by the next identification exercise in its artificial brain.

The right logo (above) is to identify a bird by photo. I think the way of this approach is basically the same as the usage of picture reference books. AI Merlin sees the picture, searches its huge picture data book, and decides the most likely species for the image. In the training by Wild Bird Society, we tried it with ppt slide showing professionally taken phot of birds like this.

i.e. the bird shown was already identified by pros, and the photo was taken by a pro. Merlin replied to us exactly the “right” answer. For the above it was Eastern Buzzard (Buteo japonicus). The problem is, can we take the above level photo with our cellphone in a field when a bird suddenly comes out in front of us? That is the question, oh yeah. Maybe you have iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the machine will give you the best shot … lucky you. I’ve never tried it in the field. In any case, seeing a bird in a forest and taking a nice photo is difficult at best. The best way would be to sit down quietly, hold your cellphone steady (that would be difficult unless you use supporting gears), wait for a long long time until a bird comes in the frame, and press the shutter button of your cellphone at the right moment. Good luck.

So, the most useful approach to ask help from AI in forests should be the middle icon, which is recording the voice of a bird and Merlin identifies it from its audio data. We tap the icon, and Merlin starts recording.

Recording and thinking …

When AI recognizes the voice matching to the data from its database, it will suggest the identification result like

It surely is a useful tool when the condition is right. I mean, when we’re surrounded by noises, not only from transportation traffic, chatting with our friends, etc., but also of winds and the resulting creaking of swaying bamboos of Niiharu, or babbling stream of Tanzawa, Merlin cannot identify the voice. I also tried the audio data recorded by TASCAM, cleaned the noise with Audible to extract birds’ voice, and played the adjusted data in front of my Merlin. Nah. The artificial brain requires the best sound condition to function … There are much room for Merlin to improvement, I guess …

It says, in Japanese,
“No suggestion.”
At least Merlin is honest
telling us it has no idea
for the owner of the voice.

In any case, unless enough data is stored in its database, even if Merlin stays in the best condition to listen to birds’ voices it cannot identify the species correctly. We must help by trying many times and reporting the data. I suppose Merlin’s main database is eBird, and so we need to keep signing-in both. The process goes like this. When we think we’ve done the recording session, we stop the mike. Merlin will ask whether to store the recording in your cell phone. We tap “Store the data” button. Your sound data is stored in your phone as .wav file. Mind you. “.wave” file is large. Merlin certainly has a function to send this data to your email or cloud storage with “share” icon. But your storage will quickly be occupied by the recording, and you may find problems with the other tasks.

“Oh I know.
I think it is a voice from a long tailed tit,”
Merlin said.
Stop button is that red one
 in the middle of the screen.

“Save” button.

So, I just stored the data in my pixel and moved the data to eBird manually. I open my eBird account to report my findings with sound data. The way to upload sound data to eBird offers us two options. On is upload the data as “Soundscape,” and another is to designate a particular data for a specific bird. Even if we have only one recording, we can upload the data for all the cases like this.

But it is cumbersome way for reporting the result. Instead, we can upload the data just once for “Soundscape,” then edit the reporting memo like

We’ve done the recording, and keep crossing our fingers Merlin’s ability to identify birds will be improved using eBird database. I hope reporting process from Merlin to eBird becomes less burdensome someday soon. Let’s keep crossing our fingers. Playing with Merlin is not useless, I wish. But … not all agree with me, it seems.

Last month there was an annual symposium held by Tanzawa-Oyama Nature Restoration Committee. This year, the theme of the talks was to promote Nature Positive by mobilizing people power for data collection. The panellists were upbeat to use cell phones and aggregating reports in GBIF and iNaturalist. (eBird is feeding the data to GBIF.) But many audience (who were regulars for such gatherings, and so, it seems to me, veterans, aka senior citizen males) were VERY sceptical in the usage of AI and collaborate with the movement. One leader of an organization in Ebina City 海老名市 proudly said “We don’t care what’s going on in the other forests, and do not see the point of sharing our data globally by taking our time from learning whateva of AI and reporting our findings. What’s wrong with writing a private memo of our flowering, and keep it private?” The other attendees said “To begin with, we don’t trust such AI or something. We do not find the merit of using such. Our familiar way of using reference books must be the best.” The speakers of the meeting were all professors or senior researchers of Tanzawa who were staying in their laboratory normally and do not come out much from there, I guess. They looked a bit embarrassed by reactions from the congregation.

The occasion held a panel session as well.

Probably, it is just a matter of generation gap, and the incidence at the symposium is common when a new technology enters a scene. I simply hope Merlin will learn more and more, and someday soon we can use it more easily in our forest nearby. Let us see how things turn out.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp

We Want to Help AI: How to report eBird, the new age of bird watching II

To use eBird, first you download the app and register yourself at eBird site by creating your account. Next, install the app and sign in. The first task you’re assigned is logging in to eBird with your account info. After clearing this, the app will ask your permission to use phone’s GPS info. You tap “Yes” then eBird shows you a suitable Bird Pack for your location. Bird Pack is the list of the bird for your location, say if you’re in Japan the list is for Japan. Please download the Pack of your choice, and you’re ready to report your bird-watching session to eBird. When you open eBird, you’ll find a bar at the bottom to start reporting. 

You tap it, then it will show you the list of possible birds you could meet according to the GPS data of your phone, which may look like this. Sorry! It’s in Japanese and the bird pack is for birds in Japan. But you can choose the language at the very beginning with eBird. Also, if you do this in your place, the language will be adjusted accordingly, and I guess the place of bars etc on the screen is the same anyway.

Say, if you report you met five large-billed crow, you can scroll the list or tap in “large-billed crow” in the search bar of the above list. It comes like the below. The number in the box left of the “crow” is the number of birds you’ve met. You can either tap this square to increase the number (in this case five taps), or simply write “5” here. When you’ve done, tap the check in the bottom right-hand corner (yellow arrow), and the first step for reporting is done.

When you complete your reporting draft from the bird-watching session, tap the bottom right-hand corner with yellow arrow in the photo before the last. The screen will ask you to confirm the end of bird-watching session. To end the draft, please tap the bottom right-hand corner (yellow arrow in the below photo).

The screen proceeds to the next step to report your session to the database. First it will ask you if you name the place where you’ve done the observation session, in the third line from the top with “!” mark. You tap it, then the cellphone ask you if you want to name the place instead of latitude and longitude.

Whatever your choice, you tap when you confirm the location data, and the next step appears. First you say “Yes” if you report your observations to eBird database by tapping the bar of the yellow arrow in the below photo. After this, please tap “Send” bar for the red arrow. eBird will tell you your data has been sent to Cornell Lab.

The sent data will refine the list we downloaded at the beginning. According to the rangers of Wild Bird Society of Japan, people in Cornell will check if the data is worthwhile to believe it. If it passes the screening the reported result is added to the global data set. If the list includes some endangered species, and so it would be better to limit the people who can see the database for this bird with the reporting location, eBird automatically set the access for this info only to the reporter, so the rangers said. In any case, when the AI receives more data, the accuracy of its identification based on the data will become more reliable, or so I hope. The point becomes more important when we use to Merlin. I tell you my adventure with Merlin next week with magic wand, nope, via my cellphone.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp

Hello AI: Merlin, eBird, and new age of bird watching?

 

The standard says winter to early spring is good for birdwatching. Especially in the forest of deciduous trees, leaves are absent during this season, which makes finding birds easier. Silence in winter forest is also helpful to listen chirping of wild birds. Waiting a bit for March, some early birds would start singing to find their mate while leaves are not yet fully opened. So far obvious, right? The next issue is, we often want to identify the bird when we find it in our birdwatching session.

Varied Tit

Not many people are satisfied with only watching / listening the birds. Almost naturally, next question arises. “What is the name of that bird?” This is a human tendency which would make Claude Levi Strauss grin. We start to learn the way to identify birds. I mean remembering characteristic look of species and checking youtube to search for that particular chirping or singing … You know the routine, don’t you? The difficult part is in applying what we’ve learned in the field. When their voice and look are very obvious like crows, we can say that bird is a crow for sure. But more often we start to discuss who’s the owner of this specific voice, or pretty brown feather. When we’re with a connoisseur the discussion could end quickly with a final voice from that person. Otherwise, we often conclude “Er … we don’t know.” Frustration.

My field guide to the birds, published by Wild Bird Society.
For Japanese birds, it covers more or less all.

So, if there is some help from AI or something, it is welcome. Some of you may know, there are several such apps that can connect its database to the photo or the sound from the microphone and tell us the name of the owner. The point is to learn how to use it. The other day in January, rangers of Wild Bird Society of Japan who station in Yokohama Nature Sanctuary held a weekend session to tell us exactly that. It was fun!

Er, it’s not bird’s nest, but a nest for Pallas’s Squirrel
 in Yokohama Nature Sanctuary.

By the way, the damage done by
the squirrels for Nature Sanctuary is serious.
 This tree is denuded by the animal
which ate the bark for their winter meal.
Surely, the tree will die soon.

Wild Bird Society of Japan collaborates with Cornnell Lab of Ornithology to promote the usage of eBird and Merlin to improve the database and ultimately promote the protection of avian species which globally observes alarming speed of extinction. To do anything, the first step is to learn the conditions of the thing, right? Having said that, the rangers said “The recognition of these apps are still limited in Japan. AI needs lots of exact data as possible. If the data eBird can accumulate is not big enough, the accuracy of Merlin’s search is not much either. Please join our global community to improve our data in Japan.” Well, OK. Corollary: the answer AI Merlin gives us is not reliable, but if we can feed in accurate data more, someday, probably soon, Merlin will become useful tool ... Alright. Let’s try. We have to start from somewhere, right?

Birds love such seeds during winter.
So, this spot in Nature Sanctuary could be
 a good place to wait for them to come.
Please be quiet …

And before that, for some of you not familiar with eBird and Merlin, I tell you about them a bit. eBird was a global database for birds whose custodian is Cornell Lab. I guess it was first created for professional researchers but quickly they decided to receive info from amateurs to accumulate enough data. So, it accepts reports of avians from anybody who accesses their reporting system and the pros in Cornell Lab check if the report has a certain level of accuracy. I guess if they received an input saying a person observed an Emperor Penguin in Waikiki Beach, the Lab sheds such report. Due to this history eBird is still more PC friendly for reporting than mobile phones. As the main usage of the database is for scientific research, I guess these characteristics of eBird with PC remain for quite some time. That’s that.

HP of eBird, Japanese version.
The detailed way to use them can be find in their HP.

And Merlin. This is an app suitable for mobile phones. You go to Apple Store or Google Play and download Merlin. Its usage is in the field. When you open the app, it gives you 3 choices for you to decide the identification method you use. The first one is to use question-and-answer type of sequence to have a list of possible candidates for a bird you’ve observed in the field. The second way is to open microphone in Merlin to let the AI analyze the voice of a bird. The third approach is to take a photo of a bird and let Merlin search for the possible candidates from that photo. When the Merlin concludes these analysis, we can send the result to eBird directly.

Merlin’s HP. The usage of it is explained in their HP.

So far, it sounds easy, as long as we are able to use internet. One big caveat in this AI approach for birdwatching is, we need internet to use especially Merlin. Hence, we cannot employ this approach in deep mountains like Yadoriki Water Source Forest where the cellphone coverage is VERY patchy at best. There is more even with internet. It’s due to the learning process of AI. More to it next week.

No internet here.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093 

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp

Snow

 

It’s snowing today in Yokohama.

But, spring is near.

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp