BirdNET

So, day 2 of #100DaysToOffload. They wont all be this long, I can tell you that.

New Home, New Garden, Old Hobby

I’m rather fortunate that my new home is in amongst some rather enormous gardens and estates with a large number of trees. So, the amount of birds in and around my garden is, for a suburb, huge.

This is one of my favourite things about the house as I’ve always enjoyed being around birds and since we moved in last autumn, I’ve been having a great time sat in the garden or at my back window.

I bought some entry level binoculars, some Bresser Hunter 8x40s if you’re curious, and have already got my monies worth getting a good close look at some Woodpeckers, Treecreepers, Jays, all sorts.

Whilst I’ve loved watching birds since a was a kid (I was a paid-up member of the Young Ornithologists Club), I’ve never been one for the details so am not great at identifying birds without assistance. So I also armed myself with Collins Gem Garden Birds and it has been a good purchase.

Birdsong Identification

While visual identification I could be better at, when trying to recognise bird calls, I may as well be deaf. Which brings me to a marvellous Android app by the folk at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology called BirdNET.

I downloaded this Shazam for birdsong a few weeks back and was sceptical it could ever work well in real world conditions. Then sat in the garden this weekend I hear a very load song that doesn’t seem the same as the kind we hear near constantly. I remember the app and set it recording. Back it comes with the result. A Nuthatch. One of my favourite birds. This was a pleasing result, but I’d only seen one in this garden once and very briefly, so again I doubted the app.

Since then, to my delight, I’ve seen a Nuthatch about 5 or 6 times. Success all round. I mean… just look at them.

The app itself is pretty good, its UI is a little basic and maybe not 100% intuitive but, I’ve seen way way worse and the functionality is solid. If you’re in Europe or North America I recommend you give it a try.