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The Future of Birding Technology?

To: Dave Torr <>
Subject: The Future of Birding Technology?
From: Carl Clifford <>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 21:51:33 +1100
They are not getting easier for me. Probably because I turn medically senile at the end of the month :-(

Cheers,

Carl Clifford


On 01/01/2011, at 6:27 PM, Dave Torr wrote:

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


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