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The Future of Birding Technology?

To: Peter Shute <>
Subject: The Future of Birding Technology?
From: Dave Torr <>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 18:27:23 +1100
Bird calls MAY be easier to identify - but still not a trivial task!

On 1 January 2011 12:56, Peter Shute <> wrote:

> I think the task of automatic identification of birds is far harder than
> the examples of number plate recognition and eye scanning.
>
> In those cases the subjects are all arranged facing the same way, and are
> of similar size. They'd have a poor success rate if the subjects were all
> different sizes, shapes and colours, facing any old direction, hiding in the
> undergrowth, etc. Compare the problem to what happens to a camera's face
> recognition focusing when the subjects turn sideways.
>
> Rather than identifying species I'd be pretty happy for now if my camera
> could at least work out which part of the scene was a bird, and focus on it.
>
> I assume the subject is tongue in cheek, but it's interesting that the
> incident that inspired it was one where his "fuddy duddy" id skills gave him
> the wrong answer (identifying a raptor from of photo).
>
> He complained that in the field the bird would be moving, giving him more
> clues. Perhaps that's the real lesson from his article. If one feels one
> needs to see the bird's flight style to identify it, why try from a photo?
>
> Peter Shute
>
>
> --------------------------
> Sent using BlackBerry
>



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