Whatbird.com

Hi zymurg,

My association with iBird is as a customer who runs iBird Plus on an iPhone. I feel compelled to reiterate what Mitch said regarding the fact that it is unlikely, impracticable, and/or impossible to develop a digital signature for bird calls such that they could be looked up Shazam-style; this is based on my knowledge of how services like Shazam and the CDDB work and of basic linguistics. As Mitch said, birds don't all sing the same song in the same way. Since there is no standard starting point for a particular bird call, exactly how might one go about algorithmically assigning a particular bird call to a particular species (assuming the device could pick up a bird song with sufficient clarity)? I would point out that voice recognition systems (not to be confused with speech recognition systems) firstly require an incredible amount of computational power and secondly can at best identify two voices as coming from the same individual. In other words, one must have recorded that same bird to know that it is that same bird, but identifying this bird's relatives by voice would first require identifying each of them as relatives then recording their voices for your database and then testing against that database of voices--so it would not be possible to do what you wish by this method unless you had already recorded every living and future individual's voice to test against.

Is it conceivable? Clearly we can imagine it. Is it feasible? Not today. 

Also to prevent confusion, Mitch did not indicate that he is working on creating this feature, he said that he is constantly developing the application (as a whole). Big difference in what a user might anticipate happening down the road based on this creative rewording of his message.

Sure it would be a cool feature and maybe someone will develop it and "own the market" as you say, but I wouldn't encourage you to hold your breath and I would dissuade you from deluding yourself or others into thinking that it will happen here any time soon.

Best wishes and happy birdwatching and homebrewing,

Robert

Austin, TX 

Robert, respectifully I disagree.

Tones, pattern and pitch can be used to distinguish between hundreds of birds. It does not take a lot of sophisitication to distingush between a "cup-o-teee" and a 'cheer-cheer-cheer' as example. You make it far more complex than it is. A haaaak and a chirp-chirp' are hardly the same and very distinugishable with todays technology.

Sorry you miss the basics. It is not necessary to be so precise. If you can reduce the choice selection of say 80 birds (like Mitch's App) down to five as example, you have accomplished the need and an astronomical improvement, ...it is a far cry from the menu drive highly inaccurate method currently employed. It is not necessary to identify or distinguish an individual bird. I don't need to know it it is the same Blue Bird that was here last year, I just want to know if it is a Blue Bird. I am looking for species, and as much as can be determined from a specific call as distinguishable from all the others that are significantly different. It is dooable. If you think technology can't distinguish between a Blue Bird and a Hawk, as example, by sound, think again. I don't have to distinguish between individual birds of the same specise and they in FACT have vocal similarities in song pattern, pitch, etc that make them distinguishable as a species within the accuracy that is many magnitudes above Mitch's manual menu driven method. (no criticism intended)

 As I told Mitch. The one who developes it first will own the market. Continue to presume it cannot be done under today's technology, and companies like that will dissappear.

 

Robert said...." Mitch did not indicate that he is working on creating this feature,"

Robert, you are correct it was not Mitch, is was the first response to my post that said...

Obnates said.... "I'm sure they're working on it, but I wouldn't expect it any time soon"

so I  should apply the comment to the poster "Obnates" not Mitch. Thanks for the correction.

 

Anyway, I know for a fact it is being worked on. Perhaps not by Mitch.

Robert, you are first for a very long time to recognize my nic. Well done., and yup, I am.

Go to my 'about' page on my website. I am not sure if my website address is permitted here. If it is, go to..

http://web.mac.com/ZYMURG/Home_Page/Welcome.html

 

 

I'm happy to respectfully disagree over this matter. I'll even say that I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

I've put together a short list of references for further reading:

Automated recognition of bird song elements from continuous recordings using dynamic time warping and hidden Markov models: A comparative study

Identifying birdsong computationally

Song Sleuth Digital Birdsong Detective

Take care,

Robert 

There was a hardware product on the market that attempted to detect birds by song. It was an embedded system and had two microphones so it could get an accurate waveform to be analyzed, a major hurdle that must be overcome. They went out of business unfortunately I think because the product was too expensive, too bulky and not accurate enough. I agree with Robert that identifying birds by there call or song is extremely difficult even when you have a perfect recording and mainframe, but we can easily imagine how cool it would be.

A few other customers have thought that Search by Song meant that iBird was able to identify a bird by its song, and so I guess Shazam has enlightened enough people that I need to reword our product page to remove the confusion. Then zymurg and others won't be disappointed because they will know ahead what Search by Song means.

I'm not going to debate the value of this feature in iBird, it is what it is. And as far as whether it should be in Plus or Pro that is not a subject worth debating in this forum. The market will tell us how good an idea it is. 

And when or if anyone is able to create a Birdshazam I will be one of the first to buy it    

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Mitch Waite

Well said Mitch.

The hardware product you mention was tried long before anyone ever heard of an IPhone and there have been a billion APPS downloaded so far. Could you imagine those developers given an iPhone with Shazam on it?  When Apple releases 3.0 the possibilities, as you know, expand tremendously.

When (not if) I hear the 'BirdShazam' (you should coin the name) product out, if I have any influence I will personally try to get you on the list.

 You have a good product, no doubt.

 zymurg

Hello,

I've been an amateur bird enthusiast since early childhood. I have spent a lot of time with family mentors learning about birds and almost as much time poring over a number of excellent field guides. I purchased iBird PRO because I knew it would be an excellent learning tool that I could grow into, especially useful for immediate identification in the field.

Let me offer a few examples of how I use the guide:

I have been particularly interested in Orioles this month, as there are several elusive pairs of hooded orioles nesting in my neighborhood right now. Over the weekend, I spotted a bird I hadn't seen before. It was fairly oriole-like, being mostly orange with black and white markings, and about the same size. Using the search feature, I quickly narrowed my list to the orioles one might find in California during the month of April. One by one, I checked their songs, but I clearly had a mismatch. I looked again at the bird and instantly realized the beak was much too thick to be an oriole. I had never seen a black-headed grosbeak, but I thought about the beak size and did a new search for "grosbeak". The field recording of the birdsong was an excellent match to the song this bird was singing. I had my bird.

I spotted what appeared to be a blackbird singing an unusual song. I first checked catbird, then cowbird. I had not known there was a brown-headed cowbird, but there he was, singing his heart out and again the birdsong feature was helpful to confirm it. There's nothing particularly glamorous about a brown-headed cowbird, but it was one of those species I sort of lumped together as blackbirds. Now I have a greater appreciation for this species.

My son was on spring break a few weeks ago and I traveled to Tucson, AZ -- a wonderful place with many birds I hadn't seen this year. iBird PRO was a great companion helping me to add 60 species to my life list for the year, most of which I won't see in northern california, or on my semi-annual trips to visit family on the east coast.

I really love this app. It has revolutionized the way I do my birding and has increased the accuracy of my uncertain identifications. But it is a serious tool for people who are serious about birding. It cannot be expected to identify birds for someone who hasn't done their homework. It shouldn't be thought of as Cliff's Notes for birds. It is a field guide for curious naturalists of all stripe.

Happy Birding!

Ben H., Marin County, CA

Ben H.:

My son was on spring break a few weeks ago and I traveled to Tucson, AZ -- a wonderful place with many birds I hadn't seen this year. iBird PRO was a great companion helping me to add 60 species to my life list for the year, most of which I won't see in northern california, or on my semi-annual trips to visit family on the east coast.

I really love this app. It has revolutionized the way I do my birding and has increased the accuracy of my uncertain identifications. But it is a serious tool for people who are serious about birding. It cannot be expected to identify birds for someone who hasn't done their homework. It shouldn't be thought of as Cliff's Notes for birds. It is a field guide for curious naturalists of all stripe.

Ben H., Marin County, CA 

Ben - your writing is an excellent summary of a truism about not only iBird but any software used for identifying birds. It "assists" in the process, not replaces the process. And it seems like you have taken advantage of the best of iBird Pro's features. Your explanation goes a long way in helping people understand how to use the product and I would love to hear from more people on how they use it as well.

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Mitch Waite

Great reading list that gives a lot of insights to detecting a species by bird call. I reformatted the list to be easier to use.

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Mitch Waite

GREAT great program.  Love the extended bird info at my fingertip versus the basics provided in a field guide (fun facts, nests, etc).  Thanks!     BUT!      I have downloaded and reloaded twice, per instructions on your FAQ, the program and it still will not play sounds.  I listen to audiobooks and music all the time - they are working fine, as are my Stokes, Smithsonian etc bird songs.  After the first download I could get the   ||   pause icon, as if the songs were playing, but I could not hear them.  After the second re-install I get only the speaker icon. Can you help??  

Sounds like some kind of conflict with another program or a bad download. Try downloading the free iBird 15 and see if that works.

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Mitch Waite

I am having the same problem.  My sounds were functioning perfectly until a recent update and then nothing.  I uninstalled/reinstalled and it made no difference. My iPhone is working perfectly - no problem with the ringer, iPod or other sounds.  I tried downloading iBird 15 and there were no sounds with that, either.  I don't have a boat-load of applications on my iPhone.  Any suggestions?

redhead:

I am having the same problem.  My sounds were functioning perfectly until a recent update and then nothing.  I uninstalled/reinstalled and it made no difference. My iPhone is working perfectly - no problem with the ringer, iPod or other sounds.  I tried downloading iBird 15 and there were no sounds with that, either.  I don't have a boat-load of applications on my iPhone.  Any suggestions?

 Did this problem start when you updated the OS or the application?  

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Mitch Waite

I don't think I can tell because my computer automatically updates Windows - however, it usually gives me some kind of message and I don't remember getting one in the recent past.  I just looked at my history of on iTunes for iBird Pro and it shows my last update was 5/6 - I know I used it after that and had sounds - does that mean it is a Windows XP issue?  If so, any ideas what I can do about that?  I really loved that feature of the iBird!!  (great product, by the way....)