Biodiversity Stewardship
Identification App Blog Post
Song Sleuth Review
Song
Sleuth has long been a staple tool in my toolkit throughout my undergraduate
and professional career in wildlife biology and natural resources management.
From having used this app to identify bird calls from acoustic monitoring
recorders, to having used it in the field to identify species of birds hidden I
foliage or the tops of trees. In this post, I will be covering what I view to
be the benefits and detriments of this app, a brief outline on how this app is used,
and my final thoughts on this app as an identification tool for the aspiring
birder and seasoned ornithologist alike. To start, the advantages of this app
are twofold. Specifically, its greatest strength is its ability to record and
save recordings of bird songs for later identification. In the field this is a wonderful
feature, as unidentified bird calls can be recorded and then identified later
when access to a bird sound library, like Cornell’s All about bird’s website,
is available for finding a match. For its second advantage, when in the field it’s
a great tool for getting a ballpark idea for identifying a species call to help
inform one’s decisions. However, this is also where the apps biggest weakness
lays, that being the app generally is unable to identify uncommon bird calls or
even common ones if the recording is contaminated with other noises. Therefore,
an inexperienced birder can make misidentifications should they take the app at
its word.
(Image Source: Jacob Netzel)
To use
this app, once purchased, is very simple. First you must set your location,
this can be any state in the USA with the exception of Hawaii; it also cannot
select specific Canadian provinces. Once done you can now use the meat and
potatoes of this app, this would be the apps spectrograph. This feature offers
a visual representation of all the sounds the microphone is picking up, and
should you be able to identify bird calls by their spectrogram patterns you can
identify birds in this manner. Once the app is open it will start recording.
When you wish to begin hit the record button and a white box will appear around
the borders of the spectrogram and when you have captured the call, you wish to
identify hit the record button again to stop the recording process. The app
will then auto select and shrink the box down over what it identifies as a bird
call, from which you can then move the box around to fully select the call, and
once done the app will generate a selection of birds it thinks the call belongs
to based on the recording. On this page some sample calls are provided and are
a quick way to check if the app has correctly guessed the species. In
concluding, this app while it is not a tool to be overly relied upon as the
final say in the field, is a great application for identifying saved recordings
in a more controlled setting.
Identitree Review
The
second app which I would like to review in this blog post is Identitree starter
kit. This application was specifically developed for students and campers in Camp
Joy located in Clarksville, Ohio and therefore this app is useful only to those
identifying trees in the Midwest United States or where such trees are present.
The downsides of this app are few, minus the aforementioned geographic
limitations, the only downside would be its short list of 30 trees that the
application can help identify. However, for those in the Midwest new to
dendrology or using a dichotomous key, will find this application a useful
starting point. Other benefits include this apps built in glossary of terms and
images to assist in identification, from which an individual can sharpen their
skills.
Using this app after instillation is simple, One must simply
open the app and follow its prompts through the dichotomous key and match the
pictures to the specimen they are hoping to identify. In concluding, this apps
strength is in its ease of use and accessibility and limited by its geographic
range.
(Image source: Jacob Netzel)
INaturalist Review
Last but
not least I wanted to look at INaturalist. This app is a great source for
civilian scientist data. Unlike the other two apps in this review, which are
built specifically for species identification, INaturalist can however be used
for this application through reviewing posts made by others in your survey site
or any other area using the pictures provided in the pins on the map. The downside
of this application is that if there aren’t any posts of what you’re attempting
to identify within easy reach of your area the application isn’t that useful.
There is however a middle button that will pull up all images of the pings
found within your map and is an expedient way to sort through the pings in
search of your target species. In conclusion, while not designed as an
identification app, this tool is excellent for sorting through data of your
area in search of specific species.
(Image Source: Jacob Netzel
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