this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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birding
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Honestly the birding tech that makes my heart swell is WhatBird. Being able to just have my phone record 15 seconds of audio and have the app spit out every possibility has opened my entire world. I'm finding birds I have never even heard of before.
I use Merlin, same thing.
Using WhoBird here. Similar functionality but open-source (so spyware-free). Available on F-Droid.
One thing I've learned is how many blackcaps I had been overlooking. Beautiful song, like a blackbird, but I'm finding it oddly hard to eyeball them.
WhoBird is way better, you are correct. I switched recently, myself. I appreciate that they pull the model onto your phone so you can use it while hiking.
Yep exactly. At first I had trouble believing it was working without a connection, but it really does. This is definitely a case of AI being useful.
Hot take on AI here on lemmy :)
I didn't know the other apps are not working offline. But yeah, another whobird user here.
Favorite use was when i was cycling up a mountain in france and heard some close by birds bickering at me. Never had heard those sounds before, so i had a look on whobird and to my surprise it was "100% - golden eagle" - i thought it was some songbird i didn't know. I stopped, looked up the tree right next to me, then saw them both take off. Awesome stuff.
Wonderful story! Thanks for sharing.
I love WhoBird. I especially like that it can record each bird's song. When I'm sitting out in the yard, there are so many singing at once, playing back their songs with an ID helps a lot to identify the ones I can't see.
Thank you for this recommendation. I always prefer open source and privacy focused apps.
Sometimes I’ll see on the list something it says is there and indignantly think to myself, ‘no way, I’d have seen/heard that’ only to turn around and see exactly what it said was there. And sometimes it gets fooled, usually by squeaky things and sometimes by mockingbirds.
It’s definitely still extremely cool. I really wish I’d had tech like this when I was a kid interested in birds and had nobody to teach me anything more advanced than backyard birds, and no way of figuring out what all the bird song mnemonics in guide books actually sounded like.
It is definitely not the only tool a serious birder should use, but, paired with a monocular and a traditional bird book? I am spotting 100x the birds I used to as a kid.
Side note, I am so excited that there is a vibrant birding community here! I have been interested in it since I was a young autistic boy. It's amazing how fruitful of a hobby it can be when you can only afford a 60-year-old bird book from the thrift store. 😀
I've onboarded my retired in laws on all of the nature apps and they have been having so much fun actually learning and understanding their environment. AI haters can never understand how much value these technologies bring to normal people.
From what i know its a different type of AI compared to the hated ones so they really are good
Unfortunately popular discourse here on lemmy lost the plot on different types of AI long ago.