(no subject)

[camwyn]

I need to find if there's an app equivalent to Shazam, but for birdsong. It's kind of tricky trying to determine what the hell species I heard singing in the morning when I cannot actually give any details about the bird's appearance. The whatbird.com step by step search helped narrow things down a bit, but it's still a case of 'am I hearing the same things that the people who wrote the official description of this or that bird's song heard?'.

(Long story short, if the sample song bits in the Merlin bird identification app are right, it was a white-throated sparrow. Which means that even if I had seen it I would not have been closer to identifying it, because I don't walk around with binoculars in the morning and would not have been able to pick out specific details separating it from any other sparrows or female editions of the local finches or even the kinglets that I've seen once or twice around here. there is not currently a search category for 'little brown bird' on the identification apps I use.)

Comments

[hannah]

Audubon has one called Song Sleuth.

[camwyn]

I may try that next- the Android version costs $9.99. I got a different one first because I didn't see the Audubon name in the Google Play listing and thought it was somebody else's

[chanter1944]

If you find one of use, let me know? I've got a couple dawn/dusk neighborhood visitors that I cannot darn well ID, every identification I make is strictly by song (no kidding), and being south by west of my home region by juuuuust enough of a smidge does not help me any.

[camwyn]

Will do. I pulled down BirdNET to test.

[derien]

I have been using Merlin, also, and it does actually sort of have a path for identifying a little brown bird. I've got to admit, though, that I am growing a bit disillusioned with its infallibility.

[camwyn]

When I can't get a helpful result with Merlin but have an active internet connectio , I wind up using whatbird.com. their step by step search works awfully well.