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