Nature Trail: How many kinds of wild birds can you identify?
We are all on learning curves and fortunately long gone are the days of aimlessly flicking through the pictures in a bird book hoping to find a matching mugshot of a mystery bird that you happened to get a fleeting glimpse of. The wonders of artificial intelligence (AI) are now readily available in a new app thanks to BirdWatch Ireland and Sunbird.
With over 100 apps to its name, Sunbird Images are the global market leader for digital nature guides. The company has just developed and produced BirdWatch Ireland's first ever app. Called 'Birds of Ireland Field Guide', the app is available both on the Apple App Store for iOS and on the Google Play Store for Android.
492 species of wild bird have been recorded in Ireland. Well over 100 of them are common and regularly occur and all of these are featured on the new app free of charge. The others are uncommon species, unusual species, rare vagrants, and ones that may have been recorded only once. Access to these additional species can be unlocked on the app with an annual subscription
The free version of the app includes high-quality identification plates, in-depth species profiles, bird names in 20 languages including Irish, a manual ID tool, a 'Similar species' tool, side-by-side comparison of up to eight species, European range maps, and the ability to create and export lists of personal sightings.
The premium paid version features cutting-edge AI to identify birds by sound or photo, access to over 1,140 bird calls and songs, plus video clips showcasing typical behaviour, lifelike 3D bird models using augmented reality, egg images for all native breeding birds, custom-made Irish distribution maps, and more.
The Sandeel in the bill of the bird in the image above is the give-away that tells you it is a seabird. Three marks for correctly identifying it as a tern and all six marks for knowing that it is a Roseate Tern, the rarest breeding seabird in Europe and a species that Ireland is a hotspot for.
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