EurekAlert: Researchers build first AI tool capable of identifying individual birds. “New research demonstrates for the first time that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to train computers to recognise individual birds, a task humans are unable to do. The research is published in the British Ecological Society journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.”
ornithology
EurekAlert: Community science birding data does not yet capture global bird trends
EurekAlert: Community science birding data does not yet capture global bird trends. “Binoculars in hand, birders around the world contribute every day to a massive database of bird sightings worldwide. But while community science observations of birds can be useful data, it may not be enough to fill the data gaps in developing countries where professional bird surveys are insufficient or absent.”
XinhuaNet: China launches online birdwatching platform
XinhuaNet: China launches online birdwatching platform. “Chinese research institutions launched a birdwatching platform … for the study and protection of coastal wetlands and waterfowls. The platform is a cutting-edge system of bird identification and data collection, including a smartphone application, an online database, a mini-program for identifying bird species and a visual system for tracking bird migration routes.”
CGTN: Chinese researchers launch app to crowdsource data for bird conservation
CGTN: Chinese researchers launch app to crowdsource data for bird conservation. “Chinese scientists and researchers are looking to big data and crowdsourcing to shore up bird conservation and interest along China’s coast. The Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Paulson Institute launched the iBirding app in Beijing on Friday, which will allow amateur birdwatchers and professional researchers alike to contribute to science by recording their bird sightings.”
South Bend Tribune: The new Indiana Birding Trail leads you to hottest spots for nature
South Bend Tribune: The new Indiana Birding Trail leads you to hottest spots for nature. “The Indiana Audubon Society has created a new website… and printed booklet to help experienced birders plan trips in areas they hadn’t yet explored, with specific trails to try, maps and public amenities.”
Phys .org: Global database of all bird species shows how body shape predicts lifestyle
Phys .org: Global database of all bird species shows how body shape predicts lifestyle. “A global team of researchers, led by Imperial College London and University College London, visited museums around the world to find specimens of nearly 10,000 species, covering more than 99 percent of all known bird species. Their results, and the database, are published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution. The link between body form of each animal species and aspects of their lifestyle, including diet, has previously been proposed, but this is the first time it has been confirmed at such a large scale and with such precise detail.”
MEL Magazine: Inside the Outrageously Prestigious World of Falcon Influencers
MEL Magazine: Inside the Outrageously Prestigious World of Falcon Influencers. “Falcon fever isn’t limited to the Middle East, though. Humanity’s fascination with the majestic, enigmatic birds has been resuscitated all over the globe. In the U.S. and U.K., a renewed interest in falcon hunting (not racing) has doubled the price of some raptors, increased the number of people applying for hard-to-get falconry licenses, and bizarrely, spawned the creation of a number of minor Instagram celebrities who drum up interest in the ancient pastime with flashy photos and heartwarming stories of interspecies friendship.” My jaw had dropped by the third paragraph of this article. I finally scraped it up and put it back on my face by the end. What a read. The last bit is somewhat icky and you should probably skip if you prefer rabbits to falcons.
Phys .org: Using artificial intelligence to track birds’ dark-of-night migrations
Phys .org: Using artificial intelligence to track birds’ dark-of-night migrations. “Now, with colleagues from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and others, senior authors Sheldon and Subhransu Maji and lead author Tsung-Yu Lin at UMass’s College of Information and Computer Sciences unveil their new tool ‘MistNet.’ In Sheldon’s words, it’s the ‘latest and greatest in machine learning’ to extract bird data from the radar record and to take advantage of the treasure trove of bird migration information in the decades-long radar data archives. The tool’s name refers to the fine, almost invisible, ‘mist nets’ that ornithologists use to capture migratory songbirds.”
Cornell University: Scientists propose bird conservation plan based on eBird data
Cornell University: Scientists propose bird conservation plan based on eBird data. “An international team of scientists used eBird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s global citizen science database, to calculate how to sufficiently conserve habitat across the Western Hemisphere for all the habitats these birds use throughout their annual cycle of breeding, migration and overwintering. The study provides planners with guidance on the locations and amounts of land that must be conserved for 30% of the global populations for each of 117 bird species that migrate to the Neotropics (Central and South America, the Caribbean and southern North America).”
BirdLife International: This map lets you track bird migration in real time
BirdLife International: This map lets you track bird migration in real time. “Springtime. Flowers are blooming, temperatures are rising, and all over the world, birds are migrating. But where are they going? Where have they been? Where do the birds we regularly see in our backyards travel? Now, a new tool allows individuals to see this data in real time. With Euro Bird Portal’s LIVE viewer, individuals can look at weekly animated maps dating back to January 2010 up to the present, that show where birds have been sighted in real time.”
New Web Site Provides Digitized Models of Bird Bones
Read an article about this but it didn’t include the URL, so I’m going straight to the source to tell you about Fauna Toolkit: Bird Bones. From the home page: “A portal to 3D digitised models of bird bones from museum collections. 159 bones from 28 species in 22 families and 19 orders are now available from the Index below.”
The Hindu: A birder gives wings to three centuries of South Asian ornithology
The Hindu: A birder gives wings to three centuries of South Asian ornithology. “Mr. [Aasheesh] Pittie has spent long and absorbed hours in them, poring over dusty journals for papers on birds. His little-known labour of love has resulted in … a bibliographic database with the mandate of indexing everything that has been published on the birds of South Asia in the printed or electronic form since the mid-eighteenth century onward, made searchable with keywords.”
Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is Getting An Update
The Internet Bird Collection (IBC) Web site is getting an update. “The Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is an important sister-project to HBW Alive and most of our HBW Alive subscribers probably already know it well. For the few who haven’t fully discovered it yet, it is the most globally comprehensive website of audiovisual recordings of the birds of the world.”
Cornell Researchers Map Migratory Birds
This is very cool! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has created an animated map of bird migration in the Western Hemisphere. “For the first time, scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have documented migratory movements of bird populations spanning the entire year for 118 species throughout the Western Hemisphere. The study finds broad similarity in the routes used by specific groups of species—vividly demonstrated by animated maps showing patterns of movement across the annual cycle.”
