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Cornell

Coming soon: A foolproof way you can instantly ID that birdsong

by Anders Gyllenhaal June 19, 2020

First of two parts

For more than a year, a CD of birdsongs was stuck deep inside our car stereo and would start playing without warning on every drive. By the time we finally dislodged the CD, Beverly had committed almost all the songs to memory while I was still struggling to tell the Tufted Titmouse from the Song Sparrow.

The art of birding by ear has always separated the truly gifted birder from the rest of us. But help is on the way for those of us who struggle. A scientific research project designed to track birds by their sounds has turned out to have a wonderfully practical use for the common birder.

It can decipher birdsongs the way the Shazam app identifies music.

We’re devoting two weeks on Flying Lessons to the art and science of birdsongs. Today’s post looks at modern research’s advances in tracking songs and calls. Next week, Beverly will tell her story of how learning specific songs can vastly enrich your birding — and she’ll share ideas on how to make progress.

The latest form of the Haikubox. The poetic name is intentionally vague so that future versions might be used for a wider variety of research purposes.

The most interesting development on the science front is a new device, called the Haikubox, coming out later this year. You’ll set it up in your yard or porch, and it will identify every birdsong within reach of the recorder. Then it will send a stream of IDs to your computer or phone, providing a comprehensive census of nearby bird life.

“We think we have a good idea,’’ said David Mann, head of Loggerhead Instruments, a small Florida company working with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to develop the device. “It’s going to be a great learning tool.’’

At the same time, smartphone apps that deliver precise IDs are now becoming available. Unlike early versions of these apps, the latest draw on thousands of songs and call samples that make them far more accurate.

Cornell Lab Director John Fitzpatrick

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab, says people have been clamoring for just such a tool for years. “If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked when there’d be a Shazam for birds, I’d be able to fund all this research with that alone,’’ he said.

The lab itself is behind much of this progress.

Cornell established its Center for Conservation Bioacoustics to apply the study of sound to bird research. Since birds are so vocal, scientists found they can track migration, breeding and overall populations by recording their calls and songs. The field took off when tech companies started sharing their software for deciphering photos and text for internet searches.

Over the past several years, Cornell and an array of academic and commercial partners perfected the recording technology, sound equipment and artificial intelligence applications used to analyze the bird recordings. Today, Cornell has an archive of 6,000 species it can identify through bioacoustics.

The beauty of bioacoustics is that it enables research in places too remote to easily reach, in rain forests and on distant islands, for instance, where scientists are studying endangered species. (Here’s a link to our story on this science that ran in the Washington Post in January.)

The same research mechanics are powering the tools for deciphering songs and calls for birders.

Holger Klinck with one of the devices that collects bird calls and songs

The Haikubox, which looks like an oversized wooden birdhouse, will keep an ongoing record of every song and call it collects. It converts the sounds to spectrographs and compares them against its library of sounds. Depending on the weather and noise levels, it will collect sounds up to several hundred feet away.

“You can put it in your backyard and hook it up to your wireless network,’’ said Holger Klinck, director of the Cornell bioacoustics center. “It will continually detect species 24/7.

“It’s a gateway to bring new people into the world of birds and get excited about it,’’ he said.

Loggerhead’s David Mann

Loggerhead’s David Mann said he’s not exactly sure who all might be likely to buy one of the devices, which are expected to cost under $500. The most likely customers are birders, but he hopes it will appeal to all kinds of people with an interest in the environment.

As he tests out a version of the Haikubox at his home in Sarasota, Florida, he found he was suddenly much more interested in the birds coming through. “I found I was paying more attention,’’ he said. “Since you get real time feedback. I’d hear something and say, ‘What was that?’ You can go and look.’’

Song Sleuth app

The Haikubox joins a long line of birdsong recognition systems, most of which are apps that tend to work for only a small sample of songs — if at all. Here’s a review of some of the early versions, and here’s one of a popular app called Song Sleuth that’s draws on a library of 200 species and gives you a choice of likely contenders.

BirdNET app

Cornell’s own app called BirdNET has set a new standard for accuracy, since it draws on the lab’s huge library of sounds. BirdNET’s Android version has been downloaded a million times. Its Apple version was supposed to be available last year, but has been slow to reach market. Cornell makes its research available for free to other makers, so the quality of these apps should get steadily better.

Holger Klinck, looking over the system used to test the bioacoustic network set up around the lab’s campus

This is good news for birders – but also for birds.

The results of the sightings on the apps, the Haikubox and whatever other products come along all help feed Cornell’s research with data on where birds are and where they’re going.

Like the eBird apps, which birders use to record the birds they see, the data has fueled the world’s most successful citizen science project and has helped track bird populations all over the world. The birdsong identifiers will add to that store of knowledge – and will be even more accurate because of the precision of these devices.

“It’s all about developing methods that allow us to do a comprehensive job of assessing what’s going on in remote areas. That’s the end goal,’’ said Klinck. “The data is what drives conservation.’’

Loggerhead Instruments is testing the Haikubox with a network of beta users around the county. We’re going to be one of these testers starting this summer and will post our experiences on Flying Lessons from time to time.

And finally, here’s a video that gives you a sense of what you see on your computer as birds are identified by the Haikubox:

June 19, 2020 2 comments

Here’s a springtime gift: Powerful new birding tools arrive just in time for the migration

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal March 11, 2020

written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

For years, the twice-a-year migration of billions of birds was one of nature’s most spectacular events that we never really got to see. That’s because most of the action takes place out of sight, far above us and often at night.

That began to change in the last decade with new technologies for tracking birds, and last week brought a milestone: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology completed a massive project that creates maps and animations for nearly all North American species.

The result is an unprecedented view of how birds move, arriving just in time for the spring migration.

This is big news for anyone interested in birds. The data in this project, all of which is free, will strengthen everything from scientific research and conservation to the power and precision of the tools you use on the birding trail.

The impacts are so far-reaching that Beverly and I couldn’t agree on what’s most important here. So we thought we’d each make our case and let you come to your own conclusions.

Canada Warbler / Photo by James Hully, Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Beverly: The best way to appreciate this work is to start by looking at one of these animations. They’re beautiful, with patches of bright colors flowing back and forth across a map of the hemisphere that represent migrating birds week by week throughout the year. I think these are the most compelling — and entertaining — of all the maps and illustrations that come under Cornell’s eBird umbrella. You can find a complete list of the maps by species here on the Cornell website.

For example, here’s an animation of how the tiny Canada Warbler travels the length of the hemisphere twice a year.

Not only can you watch the warblers’ weekly progress from far north Canada to Latin America and back, but you can use these maps to help figure out when they’re like to pass by you. And when you’re trying to find a bird you’ve never seen before, knowing exactly when the largest flocks are arriving is a huge help.

Anders: The point is that animations like the Canada Warbler, along with abundance, range and breeding maps, now exist for 610 species, which make up almost all of the species in North America, in archives Cornell calls status and trends maps.

The lab began putting these together about two years ago as a way to convert their raw bird data into compelling maps and show how birds move through the seasons of the year. The first batch of maps covered about 20 percent of the species, but the addition of the rest of the species opens all sorts of possibilities for comprehensive research and conservation approaches.

“This is a big jump in terms of the utility of the data project,’’ said Daniel Fink, a senior research associate at the Cornell Lab.

Go to the end of this post for a summary of the full lineup of birding options from Cornell.

March 11, 2020 0 comment

Birding research Conservation

“This isn’t only a bird crisis. The birds are just the messenger.”

by Anders Gyllenhaal October 17, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Part of a series

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has spent his career talking about why people should care about birds.

John Fitzpatrick

This fall, that argument has shifted to include a tougher, more compelling question: Why should people care that a quarter of the bird population has been lost in the past 50 years?

Fitzpatrick is one of the world’s leading voices on behalf of birds and a visionary researcher whose career roughly spans that half century of declines.

“The question of why people should care is so important,’’ he says. “The answer is a series of things, on a number of different levels.’’

He starts with the power and beauty of birds and our relationship with them. “Birds are not an optional lifestyle for us,’’ he says. “They sing to us emotionally, spiritually. They appear in poetry from 2,000 years ago. They are part of our fabric.’’

Birds also serve as a kind of messenger from the front lines of the environment we all rely upon, he says.

Fitzpatrick with some of the lab’s specimens.

“We need to watch the birds as a barometer of the things that are going on,’’ he says. “We need to listen to what the birds are telling us, and the birds are telling us that things are getting steadily harder for them.’’

The news that about 3 billion birds have been lost from the overall population came in a major study published in the journal Science three weeks ago. Cornell joined with the American Bird Conservancy, the Smithsonian, Audubon and Georgetown University to assemble the most comprehensive look at North American bird populations ever conducted.

The news was not a surprise, since the declines in the overall volume of birds have been the subject of many studies. They are obvious to anyone watching birds over time. But the dimensions of the losses were shocking, as was the discovery they are occurring not just with endangered birds but across almost all species, including such common birds as Cardinals and Blue Jays.

October 17, 2019 0 comment

Birding guidance Birding research Conservation

10 things you can do to help stop the alarming decline in birds

by Anders Gyllenhaal October 10, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Part of a series

The recent study that found a quarter of the bird population has been lost in the U.S. and Canada made such a big splash that it had one unexpected consequence: Some people came away thinking things are too far gone to do anything about it.

The group of organizations that sponsored the research say the opposite is the case — that now is the perfect time to confront the crisis.

Scientist Ken Rosenberg/Photo Cornell Lab of Ornithology

“What we’re saying is that this is a lot of loss, but it’s still at a point where we can turn things around,’’ said scientist Ken Rosenberg, the lead researcher on the study. “We’re not saying all these birds are going to go extinct. We’re saying it’s so much easier and less costly to be proactive, to work on this while the birds are still coming.’’

The research published in the journal Science found that the total number of birds of breeding age lost in the past 50 years has reached 3 billion. This statistic represents the volume of birds not being replenished during the avian life cycle, creating a trend with alarming potential. The total population in North America is now about 7 billion birds, down from 10 billion in 1970.

The consortium of organizations — including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Bird Conservancy, the Smithsonian, Georgetown University, and Audubon – put together a mix of solutions, from pushing for legislation, to increasing protection for endangered species, to limiting deadly pesticides.

But at the heart of the initial campaign is this simple idea: Average people can make a difference by taking a few basic steps around the house.

This post is part of a series delving into the Science research and its impacts. Click here to view an initial report on the findings, and here for a piece about how to make sense of the enormous dimensions of lost birds. Watch for future articles on why we should care and more detail on what can do done to combat the declines.

Here are 10 things any of us can do to help. The list is taken from the consortium’s recommendations, interviews with the study’s authors this week and reactions and reviews that the report generated.

Safeguard your windows against bird collisions: About a billion birds die each year from crashing into glass they mistake for airspace. You can protect birds by putting up screens, breaking up reflections that confuse birds and marking outdoor windows. For practical tips on how to do this, click here.
Keep cats indoors: One of the biggest threats to birds is the huge number of outdoor and feral cats. Cats kill an estimated 2.6 billion birds each year in the U.S. and Canada. The consortium says the solution, keeping cats indoors, is good for both birds and cats. Here’s some guidance.
Avoid plastics: Disposable plastics, such grocery bags, wraps, straws and silverware, often end up in landfills or in the oceans. Birds, fish and turtles can die when they eat the plastic or become entangled in it.
Put up a bird feeder: As habitat for birds has decreased, backyard feeders have become more important. You can help birds by feeding them, and at the same time attract year-round and migratory birds that you can enjoy at home.
Reduce lawns and non-native plants that don’t support birds: The steady conversion of land for housing and other development destroys habitat that birds must rely on. Development isn’t likely to slow, but raising native plants enables you to support many species that coexist with people. Here’s an Audubon site that helps you determine appropriate plants for where you live..
Go a step further and deliberately create bird habitat: You can help create habitat by letting dead trees remain as homes for birds, building a brush pile that certain species favor and planting nut- and fruit-bearing trees. A good summary of these and other steps can be found in this essay published last week in the New York Times.
Avoid the use of pesticides in your household – as well as in your food. The ban on DDT 50 years ago helped save such species as the Osprey and the Bald Eagle. Today the use of pesticides, in particular a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, is harming birds and the insects they rely on for food. The greater problem is in farming, but avoiding the household versions of these pesticides can make a difference. The consortium suggests going one step further to consume organic foods to support the use of pesticide-free farming.
Support legislation to protect birds: A number of bills pending in Congress would help reduce the losses. They include legislation to promote bird-friendly construction and an important bill called The Recovering American Wildlife Act. It would provide $1.4 billion to state and federal wildlife agencies to help a variety of endangered wildlife species. Another worthy bill, Saving America’s Pollinators Act, would prohibit the use of neonicotinoids pesticides altogether.
Contribute to bird organizations: The struggle to save birds will also require more ambitious and expensive efforts to protect land parcels and support research. Each of the major bird organizations – Cornell, the American Bird Conservancy and Audubon – play complimentary roles. Contributions are a big part of funding their work.
Join one of the “citizen science” projects that help track birds by reporting what you see: We can all contribute to the study of birds by reporting sightings to Cornell and Audubon. This helps track bird populations – and also supplies birders with guidance on what birds you can see and where. Click here for information on Cornell’s eBird app. Here’s information on Audubon’s Migratory Bird Initiative.

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab

Some of these suggestions may seem small compared to the size of the problem. But there’s power in numbers, said John Fitzpatrick, one of the country’s leading bird experts and director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a primary sponsor of the research.

“The idea is that we need to give people things they can do on a daily basis that make a difference,” Fitzpatrick said. “If you multiply that by millions, which can turn into billions, we will be able to change the direction of the needle.”

The consortium is working on other measures as well. Go to the website 3billionbirds.org for more details on things you can do on many of these suggestions, as well as links to the Science report, conservation measures and ways you can get involved in this project.

Ken Rosenberg, the lead author and scientist who works with both Cornell and the American Bird Conservancy, said the next phase of research will seek to break down the results by regions to determine how the losses are playing out in different places.

Future research will delve more deeply into the causes of the decline, said Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy.

Some are obvious, such as the loss of habitat and the impacts of climate change. Others are hard to pin down.

Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy

“We need to dig into the threats more,” Parr said. “It’s tough, because nature is not a laboratory where you can say, ‘Oh, let’s remove the cat threat and see what happens.’ You just can’t do that. More threats might be coming that will muddy the picture.”

The researchers agree that while more study is needed, now is the time for action. There’s still time to address the crisis, but nobody can say how much time.

“I don’t think we can wait until we have perfect science,” Parr said. “It’s clear right now that there’s a combination of threats, some of which are more serious, some not. We should focus on the threats we can see immediately.”

October 10, 2019 2 comments

Birding Birding research Conservation Featured

New research finds 30 percent of the bird population lost over 50 years

by Anders Gyllenhaal September 19, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Every birder will want to tune into a study published today in the journal Science that reaches a startling conclusion: Three billion birds — or 29 percent of the total population across all species — have been lost in North America since 1970.

The research is much more than a traditional study. All of the major bird organizations pooled resources to collect data from the last half century, track what has happened to every species and analyze the modern state of the avian landscape with a precision never before possible.

What this study means is that a sharp and widespread drop in the bird population is taking place. It includes not just the endangered species that get the most attention, but familiar, common birds like orioles, blue jays, sparrows, blackbirds that seemed to be thriving.

Grassland birds (down 53 percent) are losing habitat with the spread of farms, while coastal birds (down 37 percent) are affected by development and climate change. Populations of forest birds are down by about 30 percent from 50 years ago, and arctic birds are down 23 percent.

Go to the end of this piece for links to the many stories, opinion pieces, graphics and videos on this research. To read the Science paper itself, go to the website developed as part of this project, click “findings” at the top right and you’ll find a link.

One of the posters the Cornell Lab released with the study

The findings are so stark and surprising, the authors say, that they have reason to hope this might lead to the kind of public response that followed Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” that helped forge strong new conservation laws.

The research is delivered in the form of a dispassionate scientific study. But the authors –- a Who’s Who in ornithology — do not mince their words when describing the conclusions.

“This data suggests that we are facing the beginning of the end for nature as we know it,” said Mike Parr, president of American Bird Conservancy (ABC). “If we continue to put economic benefits first at all costs, that’s where we are headed.”

Declines among birds have been well studied in recent years, usually focused on those most threatened. Drawing on all the previous data, decades of bird counts and 10 years of weather radar, this study stands out for its breadth of data and sweep of focus.

“Multiple, independent lines of evidence show a massive reduction in the abundance of birds,” Ken Rosenberg, the study’s lead author and a senior scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy, said in a release this afternoon. “We expected to see continuing declines of threatened species. But for the first time, the results also showed pervasive losses among common birds across all habitats, including backyard birds.”

September 19, 2019 1 comment

Birding Birding research Featured

Early birders: Researchers often get hooked as kids

by Anders Gyllenhaal May 5, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Andrew Farnsworth was just 5 years old when he first started birding. As he grew up, this pastime and the science behind it became so captivating he started thinking about how to find a career that would somehow involve birds.

Today, Farnsworth, now 46, is one of the research associates at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which just completed its Global Big Day count that drew 26,000 contributors from around the world. (For a deep look Cornell’s innovation and development as the globe’s leading citizen science effort with its eBird project, see our story that ran Tuesday in the Washington Post. )

One of the intriguing backstories about eBird – a technology that’s become central to the routines of hundreds of thousands of birdwatchers – is how much of this work is in the hands of folks for whom birding was part of their upbringing.

“I was fascinated by migration at a very early age,’’ said Farnsworth, who works out of New York City and oversees the lab’s BirdCast and BirdVox projects that track the migration through a series of new tools. “I was very fortunate to be able to turn it into a career at the lab.’’

The stories of many researchers at Cornell, as well as Audubon, birding associations and conservation groups, follow similar paths.

May 5, 2019 0 comment

Birding Birding research Migration

Washington Post story explores the success of world’s leading citizen science project

by Anders Gyllenhaal April 27, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Around the world, all sorts of efforts are in the works to protect the many bird species now in decline. This week, in an article for the Washington Post, we take a deep look at one of them: the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird project and its innovative way of researching the daily life of birds.

We hope you’ll take a look at our piece, which you can find here online and is the cover story of the Post’s Health and Science section on Tuesday.

An eBird map charting the Bald Eagle’s travels over the year

The eBird project stands out in several fascinating ways: it’s now the world’s most successful citizen science effort. The project is also the scientific foundation for numerous studies on the status of modern birds, and it’s helping reshape how conservation is conducted. This is is a big part of what our Post story explores.

What’s most interesting to us is how the technology behind eBird does all of this as it’s become a valuable tool to help individuals identify the birds they see and keep track of their own birding lists. At last count, 462,000 people around the world are using the eBird app.

April 27, 2019 0 comment

Bird of the Week

Why we should skip Groundhog Day and look for Red-winged Blackbirds instead

by Anders Gyllenhaal February 2, 2019

written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Today is Groundhog Day, and though Punxsutawney Phil had good news early this morning, he’s usually wrong. It’s time to switch to a better predictor — and it turns out there’s one waiting in the wings: The Red-winged Blackbird.

The blackbird, one of the first birds to return on its spring migration, will start showing up in just a few weeks. That’s a signal of spring you can trust — and spot in almost every state of the union with its brilliant red patches atop jet-black feathers.

The Red-winged Blackbird can be found hanging out in marshes, waterways, ditches and even city parks. This bird isn’t shy or quiet: The blackbird’s got a striking, stuttering song — and can often be seen gripping the tallest stalks, sometimes swinging in the wind, as if on stage.

Most wonderful of all, while its red patches may be hidden when stationary, they stand out like colorful shoulder pads when the birds take flight.

Although most Red-winged Blackbirds migrate, they don’t travel as far as many birds do. So as they begin to move north in mid February (with males ahead of females), you’ll see them in higher latitudes before spring even thinks about arriving.

February 2, 2019 1 comment

Birding Birding research Featured

Anxious for the spring migration? Try Armchair Birding on Facebook

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal January 24, 2019

written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

House Sparrows hop along the sidewalks of downtown Washington, even on a 20-degree day. There are starlings galore and the occasional mockingbird. But my warblers, buntings and finches flew south months ago.

I find myself craving a forest silence shattered by birdsong and the endorphin rush of spotting a male in full breeding colors. It’s a glorious state of oblivion I can’t seem to get any other way.

How did this “birding thing” become so addictive?

My gardening friends tell me it’s much the same for them, only with dirt, blooms and weeds. To get through the Massachusetts offseason, my sister-in-law studies seed catalogs and salivates.

Birding magazines are a bit like seed catalogs, but they just weren’t doing the trick. Then, on Facebook, I discovered an extremely entertaining way to help fill the void.

It’s a Facebook Group called “What’s This Bird?” where folks post photos of birds they can’t identify. Other birders tell you what it is. (This is a Public Group from the American Birding Association. Sign in to Facebook, and then click here to check it out.)

For starters, you’ll notice that most of the photos are same-day, and all of them say exactly where and when the bird was found. This gives me a sense of “being there” — Armchair Birding in a revved up way.

This Group is also like a quiz to test your own identification skills. Some of these folks are crackerjack birders who take the time to point out subtle details that can be surprisingly enlightening.

January 24, 2019 1 comment