My apartment is right next to a park, and I was thinking about buying a microphone to set up on my balcony to be able to get observations of nocturnal animals/get observations while I sleep. I don’t want to manually scrub through 8 hours of recordings every day (even with a spectogram), so I was hoping to be able to feed the recording into computer software that can analyse it for me and pick out the clips that it detects as having a birdcall, insect calls, frog vocalisations, etc and export those clips for me (preferably with time labelled). Has anyone done this before? Does there exist software that has the functionality I’m seeking? Also, if you have done this before, can you recommend a reasonably robust microphone setup?
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I think @ahospers is quite knowledgeable about this type of thing
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This project https://www.earsinthedriftless.com/ uses BirdNET-Analyzer for large amounts of data. They did a lot of research choosing their recorders so maybe we can assume they put as much footwork into the software selection.
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The link doesn’t work and Wayback Machine pulls up nothing.
Sorry. Fixed.
I’ve used Chirpity (https://chirpity.mattkirkland.co.uk/) for this. It can use Birdnet as the model, or its own. It’ll work on large sound files, but also on multiple files at once. It’s been working well for me.
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I’m…not really willing to spend $600 on a microphone for this. I was targeting more like $100-$200. Although, it’s very cool they are pretty close to where I am!
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I found this: https://www.wildlifeacoustics.com/products/song-meter-micro-2 If my budget looks good, I will buy it and hopefully it should be fine for hobbiest uses.
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I use birdnet app for sound recording files, although it can only id birds.I haven’t used a microphone like this before, so idk how to use one.
Interesting idea, but where is the ‘personal encounter’ if you’re asleep?
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@andrewtree This is the same question and dilemma for any/all trail camera images that are uploaded to iNat. In the broadest sense, we might excuse and allow such detections because we remotely detected an animal which was in an area of interest to us. It’s the personal effort to acquire the detection that is the “interaction”. It’s a stretch, but that’s how I justify them!
I’m more conservative when it comes to keeping my bird Life List and other lists. For instance, my trail camera once documented a Black-headed Grosbeak in my yard–a species I had never even seen (at that time) in my home county. I uploaded that image to iNat but the species remained off my county list until I actually viewed the species first-hand several years later.
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Recordings from microphones/cameras are permitted as long as there was a manual step in the processing–ie a 100% automatic process from camera footage to iNat upload is not allowed.
I would of course like to have a more personal encounter, but I value sleep over staying up to 2 AM to hear an owl :P
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As a person who spent the last few nights watching owls and moths, I am now slightly less sane and slightly more dependent on coffee to stay awake. It is worth it. I think.
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The Merlin app has this for bird calls specifically.
If you give it the time the recording starts, is it able to export clips of each call labelled with timestamps and the species? I have limited executive function so I’d like to be able to get a process that’s as smooth as possible.
I just tried it with a recording I made on my iPhone. It seems to work pretty good!
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