Jon Sullivan on Nostr: Here's my irregular reminder that ecological monitoring is really easy and more ...

Here's my irregular reminder that ecological monitoring is really easy and more people could be doing it.

On the right are my notes made throughout today while I was working at my home office by an open window. I've noted every time I heard or saw a native NZ bird or saw a butterfly. The notes are broken into 20 minute intervals. With practise, this is easy to do. (Less easy is my trying to learn to speak bellbird, so there's the song types noted that they're singing, eg doot Doot DEET Doot DEet).

Anyway, yes, it's a little weird, but is easy to do and accurate and quickly builds up to interesting patterns. We could have been doing monitoring like this for centuries, but largely have not.

On the left of my screenshot is BirdNet Analyzer using machine learning to crank through an audio recording I made up in the hills. It's the more modern and automated approach to bird monitoring, but it's much more expensive (the audio files quickly accumulate to a take up a lot of storage space) and BirdNet isn't nearly as good at detecting my favourite NZ birds as I am.

#ecologicalMonitoring #birds #WildCounts