Song Sleuth, again

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Hi Peter,

 

Sorry I didn't mean to put you off or seem rude. I also appreciate that someone takes the effort to make us aware of something that may be relevant or useful. Some technical innovations are great but some are so far fetched as to be unworkable or pointless. If such an machine existed in Australia, it would hardly be likely to be loaded with every known type of bird call, just the most obvious probably hundred. So it would contain less than what many of us know anyway. I was referring to the idea of remote DNA analysis as fantasy. For what little it matters, I have no vested interest either way and don't have an axe to grind or agenda to push, obvious or not. I certainly would not wish to be restrictive to other people. Although I think it would be foolhardy to invest money in something like this "Song Sleuth", whatever it claims to do.

 

Bird watching is primarily something fairly close to nature and learning about the birds from taking some effort to do so, rather than being over concerned with commercial gadgetry. Bird songs are sufficiently varied that a machine would not be able to interpret all the possibilities and how would you know a machine would focus on the sound you are interested in. You would need to be quite close to increase the chance that it is focussing in on the particular sound. Therefore I suggest that such a gadget would be pointless and the problem better addressed by looking at the thing making the noise.

 

Philip