Birdsnap

What is it about?

Birdsnap is an electronic field guide that's a little different from the others. Researchers from Columbia University and the University of Maryland have developed Birdsnap using computer vision and machine learning to explore new ways of identifying bird species. Birdsnap automatically discovers visually similar species and makes suggestions for how they can be distinguished. In addition, Birdsnap uses visual recognition technology to identify birds in images you upload. Based on your location and the time of year, Birdsnap knows which birds are present, and can use this to produce a custom guide to the local birds and to improve the automatic identification results. It covers 500 of the most common North American bird species.