Birdweather is a living library of bird vocalisations. With active stations around the world, continuously listening in backyards, nature preserves, and remote installations, the library now has over 170 million unique detections from over 5,000 of the world’s global species.
BirdWeather PUC is a portable nature recorder featuring dual microphones, WiFi/BLE, GPS, environmental sensors, a microSD card, a built-in neural engine, all in a rugged weatherproof enclosure. The BirdWeather mobile app and web dashboard work hand-in-hand with PUC, enabling users to learn more about their own visitors, and listen to birds around the world. BirdWeather was designed to be an open system, with multiple ways for researchers to pull data from the library.
From founder Tim Clark – “With the BirdWeather PUC, we’ve removed the complexity and created a simple, easy-to-use (one-button) AI powered portable device that is equally at home in your backyard, out in the field, or tagging along on a hike, continuously listening and automatically identifying over 6000 global species. Why sound? For every bird you can see, there are dozens more you can hear! From owls to osprey, not every bird is interested in sticking around to have their photo taken.”
Birds live at the edge of our changing world, impacted by everything from habitat loss to global weather patterns. Within their ranks are a number of sentinel species – birds which researchers study, monitoring changes in their behavior that can signal a shift in the ecosystems that we all depend upon. Tim adds – “By continuously listening to AI-powered stations around the globe, we can begin to understand how birds are responding to everything from the large-scale wildfires that are now a yearly occurrence, to the new-normal ‘100yr’ storms”.
The response from the birding community has been incredible. From one of the early adopters, Rob Frith “I cannot sing the praises of BirdWeather enough. Over the last 9 months it has given me previously hidden insights into the birdlife at home, on hikes, where I work and where friends and family live. I have been able to learn new songs, track the ebb and flow of the bird year, inspire those around me and gain a deeper connection to the natural world. I look forward to expanding this using the PUC and contributing further to global bird conservation.”
Tim’s own BirdWeather Station (#1) in Moss Beach, CA has been active, almost continuously, since the fall of 2021.
These plots show the detection counts for a few of the common (and a couple less common) visitors to Tim’s Moss Beach station, showing how it’s possible to spot change, both in regular and migratory visitors.
You can access the BirdWeather library via the web dashboard HERE
The BirdWeather PUC is live on Kickstarter through October 13th, 2023.