Big question.
Some 3 billion birds have disappeared in North America since
1970.ref
Pesticide use, habitat destruction, insect decline,
and predation by outdoor cats are some of the suspected causes.
Can we find bird communities that are still healthy and determine why they are prospering?
If so, then our findings could be applied to improve bird conservation and restoration.
How.
We will compare sound recordings from many study sites,
analyzing them with other factors to determine what affects bird populations.
We collect data with Merlin, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's free app for both Apple and Android phones.
Merlin makes high-quality WAV recordings of birds, insects, and other sounds,
and by using artificial intelligence it identifies the birds. Importantly, its data are independent of
the hearing and visual skills, and birding expertise of its users. Thus, it is a gateway for
even young children to become involved with science, collect verifiable data,
and make their own findings about nature, doing so from the safety of their homes.
Discover Life provides tools to assemble, analyze, and publicly share data.
The links on the right show some of these.
Our research protocol.
We build detailed site lists that enable us to compare bird communities over time and space.
Our protocol requires frequent sampling of focal spots, such as at a house.
If you doubt Merlin's ability, rest assured, it is fabulous at taking
standard samples without biases inherent in human observations.
While it makes both false positive and false negative errors,
we drop obvious ones and statistically filter out and correct for others.
Join us.
We need your help to build thousands of site lists. Please join us. Learn the birds at a site of your choosing,
how they change seasonally, how they differ from other sites, and together, let's answer why.
If you are a teacher, please ask your students to compare the birds at their homes. It's easy with Merlin and the
tools we provide here. Woodpeckers or invasive species, anyone?
You do not need to know your local birds. Hopefully you will learn many.
We seek contributors who will make as many recordings starting at sunrise as their schedules permit.
Our sites need to cover the gamut of disturbed urban areas, suburban gardens, farms, and more pristine natural areas.
So whatever site you study, your data will help answer the larger question, what must we do to have healthy bird communities around us.
Listen to a Merlin recording of a Carolina Wren
Instructions: Read steps in red below, then click 'Get going.'
1. Install Merlin and your region's Bird Pack on your phone.
2. Search sunrise on the web for your city. This time changes almost daily.
3. Record birds at sunrise for 30 minutes by clicking Sound ID on Merlin.
Set your phone to maximum volume. Point its microphone at the birds or sky, not yourself.
If you want to record for longer, make additional recordings of 30 minutes or less.
Ones over 40 minutes have technical issues.
You can leave your phone unattended whilst you eat breakfast and get ready for the day.
However, be warned that incoming calls and other events sometimes stop the recording.
If you want to learn your birds, it's a joy to listen and watch the birds as Merlin identifies them.
Unless you like getting wet, there is little reason to record in the rain. Few birds call then and they
are difficult to hear and identify when they do.
4. Set up your free Listen account -- under Get going above input your email and name, then pick a pin.
5. Set up a site in your account describing where it is, its chracteristics, etc.
6. Enter recordings:
a. Navigate on your phone to "My Sound Recordings" found under Merlin's three green lines at the top left.
b. Click on a recording in Merlin -- then on your computer input the recording's date, time, and duration,
then click "Submit."
c. Report birds -- input all birds identified by Merlin in the recording,
noting any that are misidentified, then click "Save."
d. Repeat for each recording steps b and c.
e. Upload recording when a link appears so that we can analyze insect and other sounds in it.
f. Delete recording after uploading or if you need the space.
7. View results -- follow links to see site lists and compare your results seasonally and with other sites.
