BirdWeather

While certainly not 100% accurate all of the time, I’ve found my PUC to be relatively comparable to Merlin when I’ve run the two apps at the same time. As a matter of fact, there’ve been several instances where Merlin misidentified a bird song that the PUC either accurately reported or didn’t identify at all. And, I appreciate the scoring & probabilities associated with the songs/calls identified especially if I don’t get a visual on the bird(s) in question. I consider this relatively new technology and am assuming as time passes it will improve (similar to Merlin, which everyone used to grumble about). I went out to Cornell Labs bioacoustical website to read about the technology (& several of the papers associated with the BirdNet/BirdWeather bioacoustics) and found them helpful in better understanding the results presented in the BirdWeather app, the datasets they rely upon to identify birds (Xeno/Canto, etc) and the difficulties associated with identifying birds by sound. It gave me a better appreciation for the complexities involved in bio-acoustical analysis of sounds & the data I was seeing (& not seeing) on the BirdWeather app. As for the PUC itself, I found it relatively user friendly & rather intuitive (plus it helped to read the “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the BirdWeather website). As a matter of fact, I’m impressed enough with this whole setup that I’ve already ordered another PUC…this time the BAT edition. I’m anticipating that the BAT PUC will provide a whole new realm of wonders present in our night skies - really, I think of these devices as exciting technology, perhaps still in its infancy, but certainly a worthwhile investment.

I am a blind person, and I like BirdWeather because I can click the listen button and find out what birds are singing, and not have to try to find a description of the birds identify it, but lately, the PUC thing that pops up when you first launch it is getting in my way, and it's very hard to find the clothes button. Usually by the time I make that screen go away, the bird I am after has stopped singing.

I received an email response less than 15 minutes after contacting the support email for BirdWeather/PUC.