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Just realized the AI bird app ID'd 47 species on my Ohio hike and I still don't trust it
Went out to Hocking Hills on Saturday with a new bird ID app that uses AI sound matching and it pinged 47 different species in 3 hours, including a cerulean warbler I never saw. Problem is it also called a distant lawnmower a wood thrush twice, so now I'm second guessing every ID it gave me. Does anyone know how accurate these AI audio models actually are for birds, or am I just wasting my time?
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david7391mo ago
Those AI sound apps are decent for common stuff but they really struggle with the hard calls. Cornell's Merlin is probably the most reliable one out there since it only IDs birds it's confident about, but even that gets fooled by tree frogs and squirrel chatter. What I'd do is look up the eBird reports for Hocking Hills from the same weekend and see if other folks logged those same species, that'll tell you which of your 47 are actually possible for that spot and time of year. And a wood thrush has a really distinct flute-like song, so if the app heard that in a lawnmower it's probably just picking up the low drone and guessing.
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