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I'm friends with some of the researchers on the Sound ID portion of this app! The team's gone to great lengths to make sure the machine learning models and eval

by gcr 1y ago

I'm friends with some of the researchers on the Sound ID portion of this app! The team's gone to great lengths to make sure the machine learning models and evals are solid. Under the hood, Sound ID is a great example of how "domain-expert-driven" careful research can give more reliable results than just feeding in data and hoping for the best.

pgn674 1y ago
I'm definitely impressed with the sound ID. One time there was a cacophony of birds singing outside my house at varying distances, and the app was able to identify 6 different bird species within 30 seconds. All 6 suggestions seemed reasonable to me.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  We sometimes joke it's hallucinating when it detects something unexpected, but often it was being accurate. I saw my first ever male Blackburnian Warbler a couple weeks ago after Merlin picked it up.
- parpfish 1y ago
  I’m really impressed about how well the sound ID works for birds doing mimicry. We had a brown thrasher stringing together a long series of mimicked calls that got labeled correctly as a brown thrasher. I don’t even know how you’d approach the ML for that seeing how unique each song is to each bird
  - kiddico 1y ago
    Equally so I've had a red wing black bird mimic a cardinal and it appeared as a cardinal. The waveform was too thick and looked funky which is why I tracked down the bird doing it. (I Was at the Ohio bird sanctuary)
Theodores 1y ago
I would like to see a version of the app that assigns names, as in 'Fred', 'Bertha', 'Kevin' to given birds, algorithmically. I get the same birds in my garden and I already know what species they are, but, I wouldn't mind knowing if my favourite birds have got new mates, or, if I am down the road, some way from home, to confirm that it is 'Kevin' that I see, as in the same 'Kevin' that frequents my bird bath. Consistently assigning names to different blackbirds might be tricky, but, for other birds, I am sure that some AI algorithm could do this.
drcongo 1y ago
Pass them my thanks. I've been using the Sound ID on dog walks for a few years now and I love it. It's made me much more interested in the birds around me now, and if it tags a new bird that I've not come across before I'll often try to spot it. I think I'm a bird spotter now.
xirdstl 1y ago
It is amazing, but it does often give false positives. That probably can't be avoided, though
- PeeMcGee 1y ago
  I like how the app shows reference calls/songs for detected birds so I can verify using my own judgement, or to figure out which birds are which when there's a lot of chirping going on.
j2h2 1y ago
It does work pretty well. Great for non line-of-sight birding.
rigrassm 1y ago
Someone near my house has a rooster that does his thing every morning. And every morning I look at the app hoping to see him pop up in the ID list but alas, it never IDs him. Please Let your friends know that roosters are birds too and deserve their recognition as the world's wake up call! Lol
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
Merlin is magic. Love the app
kiddico 1y ago
I'd love an API of some sort. I have some birdwatching/tracking ideas that require I can id a bird by sound and Merlin would be the best route if they just let people us it ...
- nemo 1y ago
  For that you want to use BirdNet: https://birdnet.cornell.edu/api/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/api/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/ Merlin is trained on the same source as BirdNet. You can also use the iNaturalist API for visual ids, for what it's worth. https://www.inaturalist.org https://www.inaturalist.org
  - kiddico 1y ago
    I just got back to HN, THANK YOU. I'll look into those.
aksss 1y ago
Care to share any anecdotes? I can imagine some pretty interesting conversations about their work.
evereverever 1y ago
I was really impressed when I took a trip to England and it recognized european birds. At one point it said there was a Rose-ringed Parakeet which seemed totally wrong, but then we saw a bunch of them in Hyde park a couple days later. The iOS app did seem to lock up when trying to download the region packs though. I should find out where to file a bug!

by gcr 1y ago

pgn674 1y ago

I'm definitely impressed with the sound ID. One time there was a cacophony of birds singing outside my house at varying distances, and the app was able to identify 6 different bird species within 30 seconds. All 6 suggestions seemed reasonable to me.

pfdietz 1y ago
We sometimes joke it's hallucinating when it detects something unexpected, but often it was being accurate. I saw my first ever male Blackburnian Warbler a couple weeks ago after Merlin picked it up.
parpfish 1y ago
I’m really impressed about how well the sound ID works for birds doing mimicry. We had a brown thrasher stringing together a long series of mimicked calls that got labeled correctly as a brown thrasher. I don’t even know how you’d approach the ML for that seeing how unique each song is to each bird
- kiddico 1y ago
  Equally so I've had a red wing black bird mimic a cardinal and it appeared as a cardinal. The waveform was too thick and looked funky which is why I tracked down the bird doing it. (I Was at the Ohio bird sanctuary)

Theodores 1y ago

I would like to see a version of the app that assigns names, as in 'Fred', 'Bertha', 'Kevin' to given birds, algorithmically. I get the same birds in my garden and I already know what species they are, but, I wouldn't mind knowing if my favourite birds have got new mates, or, if I am down the road, some way from home, to confirm that it is 'Kevin' that I see, as in the same 'Kevin' that frequents my bird bath. Consistently assigning names to different blackbirds might be tricky, but, for other birds, I am sure that some AI algorithm could do this.

drcongo 1y ago

Pass them my thanks. I've been using the Sound ID on dog walks for a few years now and I love it. It's made me much more interested in the birds around me now, and if it tags a new bird that I've not come across before I'll often try to spot it. I think I'm a bird spotter now.

xirdstl 1y ago

It is amazing, but it does often give false positives. That probably can't be avoided, though

PeeMcGee 1y ago
I like how the app shows reference calls/songs for detected birds so I can verify using my own judgement, or to figure out which birds are which when there's a lot of chirping going on.

j2h2 1y ago

It does work pretty well. Great for non line-of-sight birding.

rigrassm 1y ago

Someone near my house has a rooster that does his thing every morning. And every morning I look at the app hoping to see him pop up in the ID list but alas, it never IDs him. Please Let your friends know that roosters are birds too and deserve their recognition as the world's wake up call! Lol

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

Merlin is magic. Love the app

kiddico 1y ago

I'd love an API of some sort. I have some birdwatching/tracking ideas that require I can id a bird by sound and Merlin would be the best route if they just let people us it ...

nemo 1y ago
For that you want to use BirdNet: https://birdnet.cornell.edu/api/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/api/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/ https://birdnet.cornell.edu/ Merlin is trained on the same source as BirdNet. You can also use the iNaturalist API for visual ids, for what it's worth. https://www.inaturalist.org https://www.inaturalist.org
- kiddico 1y ago
  I just got back to HN, THANK YOU. I'll look into those.

aksss 1y ago

Care to share any anecdotes? I can imagine some pretty interesting conversations about their work.

evereverever 1y ago

I was really impressed when I took a trip to England and it recognized european birds. At one point it said there was a Rose-ringed Parakeet which seemed totally wrong, but then we saw a bunch of them in Hyde park a couple days later. The iOS app did seem to lock up when trying to download the region packs though. I should find out where to file a bug!