“Shazam for bird calls” is a compelling sales pitch, and a difficult technical proposition. It’s much harder for an algorithm to identify animal sounds, in all their wild pied beauty, than to recognize a specific recording of a pop song. Impressively, though, several apps really can identify a bird by its song, with a little human help.
We tested four birdsong recognition apps that claim to detect bird calls and songs (which are two different things). The results were impressive
