Macaulay Library

So, you know, we tend to rely so much on artificial intelligence as if it's like the best birdwatcher in the world, but it really can't do more than it's trained to do.

And that requires the work of everybody who goes out and gets data that can train it, whether that's locality data or providing songs to the Macaulay Library at Cornell so that there are more and more and more training data for things like Merlin and other AI tools people have.

That's such a good, like so interesting because we were like, we got like frustrated because we're like, we can hear all this noise and we're looking and it's like, you know, hearing

a bird

And the really cool side story on this one is that Tom Schulenberg, with whom I've done these taxonomic updates, you know, since 2008, now retired from the lab, but he's still involved in the Avalos group.

The earliest record of this bird, and I think the first proven occurrence in Peru, since all this description, recent description happened in Brazil, was a very old recording that Tom Schulenberg archived in the Macaulay Library at Inimuspa, like what, 40 years ago or something when he visited this area and heard, heard a weird sounding Tindamu.

So, um, as this thing came out, people realized like, oh, there's this Tindamu spa recording from this area.

I wonder if it's the same thing.

Pam might already be working on that.

She really is kind of going systematically through these things that have just been over sites for too long and really crafting.

And the ability to go through so many recordings and so many photos in Macaulay Library now really gives you what, you know, museums had provided before but now we have sort of live birds and soft part colors and vocalizations to to work from for what do they sound like on st lucia what do they sound like in puerto rico what do they sound like on the other line or and are these same or different um I'll do one other just while I'm on the topic of sound recording.

One other plug is that there's a huge eBird release that just went out this week, which is sound recording, sound record upload straight from Merlin to an eBird checklist.

From pets to pests, on this week's MonoMinute, we've got the songs, or rather the squawks, of the introduced rose ring parakeet.

That's courtesy of recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Here's University of Hawaii at Gila professor Patrick Hart.

There are no native parrots or parakeets in Hawaii, but many species have been brought here by people over the years and have escaped into the wild to form breeding populations.

But on a different area of sound, something that you've got involved in, and this is I would suggest right down your alley, something that really would, would excite you, is the Big Year of African Sounds, and this is where there's been this, um, deficiency of sound recordings on the African continent.

And, um, the Macaulay Library and Cornell University overseas, they've, you know, got raised... started this initiative, um, think BirdLife South Africa and a whole lot of people involved, to try and get as many sound recordings as possible.

So what was it that really excited you about getting involved in the Big Year of African Sounds project?

Ja.

Uh, we can look at, uh, different areas they may be going through that are at risk, urban zones, areas where light pollution, all that we're able to get just by listening to the sky.

Wow, and you use something from the Cornell Lab's Macaulay Library, I think, right? The flight call filter?

Yeah.

You know, interestingly, a lot of folks are probably familiar with what we're doing.