Ornithology & Machine Learning - Birdnet - NV Presentation November 30, 2023 by Sunny Tseng

As a birder in today’s world, you’ve likely used an app called ‘Merlin,’ employing machine learning techniques to identify bird species based on their vocalizations. However, Merlin’s background model is not open source, limiting accessibility for researchers in ornithological studies. In this talk, Sunny Tseng will introduce another open-source machine learning model, ‘BirdNET.’ BirdNET publishes its source code, enabling researchers to modify and apply the model for large-scale acoustic data analysis. Sunny will share insights into how her PhD study has applied BirdNET to address various ecological questions, such as individual owl identification and community-level avian monitoring. Sunny Tseng is a PhD candidate at the University of Northern British Columbia. Originally from Taiwan, she entered the birding world as a field sound recordist, amassing a collection of bird sounds from nearly 300 species. Her PhD study in Canada involves using acoustic monitoring to explore avian biodiversity and how to integrate acoustic data with machine learning techniques to address various ecological questions. Currently residing in Vancouver, Sunny actively participates in organizations such as Nature Vancouver, the UBC Biodiversity Museum, the Cascade Bird Box Team, Birds Canada, and various other organizations. She enjoys meeting people with the same passion.