Shazam for Birds: Three Bird Call Recognition Apps
The Shazam for the Birdcries is a compelling selling point and a complex technical proposition. It is much more difficult for an algorithm to identify animal sounds in all their wild beauty than it is to recognize a specific recording of a pop song. It’s impressive, however, that several apps can actually identify a bird from its song with a little human help.
We tested four bird song recognition apps that claim to detect bird calls and songs (they are two different things ). The results were impressive.
Methodology
We tested our apps using these recordings of common American birds:Redbird , Warbler ,Mourning Dove ,American Robin ,American Crow , House Sparrow, andGray Squirrel . Some records indicate a bird, while others show the background singing of other species of birds.
Recognizing recordings is not the same as identifying an unknown bird in the wild. Some of these apps base their results on the user’s location, which can be confusing when we test them in an office building in Manhattan. This is not a comprehensive test of the reviewed applications, but a rough demo. In the field, your mileage will vary.
However, if you have a recording that you want to run in multiple applications, you need to save the file and play it aloud – none of these applications support file import. So an app that can recognize calls via recording is doubly useful.
results
Among our four applications, we got at least one correct guess across all seven entries. Three applications performed well, but on different birds. Here’s a breakdown of the correct identifications: Y for yes, N for no, and K for sort of (when the app needed a few tries or was suggested a few other birds first).
Three of our four apps worked pretty well. Once you get your bird recording, you can start it with all three.
Song Sleuth (iOS $ 9.99)
The most beautiful and complex application. If you want to know about the birds you ID, then this app is your best choice.
As soon as Song Sleuth is loaded, it starts recording sound, displaying it on the spectrogram. You don’t have to expect a bird’s cry. Instead, hit record shortly after starting the call, and then stop when you’ve had enough.
You can record indefinitely, although the app recommends trimming the results as short as possible. Remember to delete long entries to save space.
Song Sleuth lets you edit your recording to highlight the birdsong you want, which is very important in noisy environments. The editing process is a bit tricky, but still intuitive enough to get through without a tutorial.
The app then analyzes your recording right on the device and returns a list of possible options based on your recording and your location, with reproducible samples for comparison. If the app can’t identify your bird, you can still manually select it from the entire database, which even includes squirrels, chipmunks, humans, and the spring-staring choir frog. The database also contains more sound samples, as well as distribution maps, images and descriptions.
After you have identified your bird and made notes, Song Sleuth will save it to the card with all your notes. You can also edit, export or share your past recordings. You can even re-analyze an old recording.
In our test, Song Sleuth was the only app that recognized a squirrel – useful for ignorant laymen like me who might mistake angry rodents for birds.
ChirpOMatic ($ 3.99 for iOS; £ 3.99 for iOS in the UK )
The simplest app and the best fortuneteller. If you just want accurate guesses and not much information about birds, this is your best bet.
ChirpOMatic also opens to the recording screen, but does not start recording until you press the big red button. Press again to stop recording, or allow recording for a maximum of 12 seconds.
The app automatically analyzes your recordings based on your location and current season and returns multiple guesses along with a photo and sample recording for each bird. If you have a good phone signal, ChirpOMatic will send your recording to the server for more thorough instant analysis. If you are offline, it will still parse the recording locally and you can save it for full analysis later. Once you find the bird you want, you can confirm it (and come back to it later).
ChirpOMatic doesn’t have much information about birds; you need the companion application Chirp for this ! which contains concise offline entries, as well as links to entries for each bird at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and Wikipedia. You will also need Chirp! check the complete bird database if all ChirpOMatic’s assumptions are wrong. There is no map view either.
ChirpOMatic includes a “bird-safe” mute mode so you don’t play your recordings aloud and confuse the real birds around you.
In our unscientific test, ChirpOMatic ended up guessing all kinds of birds, although sometimes it took several tries. He couldn’t recognize anything other than a bird, which only matters if you identify only by sound. ChirpOMatic regularly updates its databases with new birds, so you will continue to get your money back.
Bird Song ID ($ 4.99 for iOS / Android; £ 3.99 for iOS in the UK / Android in the UK )
A good backup when you don’t have a good recording. Only use this if the first two apps don’t cover all of your needs.
Bird Song Id, released in US and UK variants, has an ugly but functional interface. It performed slightly worse than our other two options, but recognized a couple of calls that gave ChirpOMatic problems.
You will have to look for the detection function: from the main screen select “Autorecord” and press the record button. Try to hear birds singing for at least 30 seconds. When you’re done recording, click Stop and then Auto Recognition.
There is a strong results page in the app that lists the validity scores for each possible bird. You can reproduce samples of possible birds directly from the results.
The My Recordings section displays your previous recordings by date or on a map. Again, the interface is ugly but contains a lot of data.
If you cannot get a good recording, as a last resort, try answering the questionnaire in the Manual ID section by specifying the pitch, regularity, volume and region of the conversation. To process your answers, click on the checkmark instead of the inexplicably placed “Quiz” button, which automatically plays bird calls so you can learn to identify them.
SongBird (iOS $ 9.99, removed)
Pigeon droppings. Research lesson before buying.
This app, removed from the App Store a few days after we bought it, has failed to identify or even attempt to identify a single birdcry. We tried eleven more bird recordings and three real birds outside our window, and each time we got the same opaque error message. There was no bird information in the app, just a recording screen. If it wasn’t a scam, this was the worst app we’ve ever seen. (Apple returned our ten bucks after a polite email.)
We include this only as a caveat. Don’t pay for apps without reading reviews and researching evidence that they work. Even Apple’s supposedly strict shipping requirements could not rule out this app. In the meantime, it has garnered over 400 votes on the Product Hunt consumer forum, although the developer battled unhappy users in the comments.
conclusions
If you only pick one bird call recognition app, make it Song Sleuth. Its automatic recording, sophisticated editing interface and extensive bird database make it the most powerful all-in-one tool.
If you’re having trouble with Song Sleuth, ChirpOMatic and Bird Song Id can fix some of the shortcomings. At just $ 14 for all three, not a bad price to feel like Snow White interacting with bluebirds. Detecting bird sounds is a very difficult task for a computer that no application can handle. While your brain can turn off all other birds in the background, the current generation of algorithms have a much harder time doing the same and telling which of the five birds you wanted to identify.
Remember not to make the sounds of birds aloud when recording sound. Birds make these sounds for life or death, and if real birds hear these recordings, it can confuse them and affect their behavior. Don’t be a bird bully.