Can you measure a birdsong? Press play, then drag a box around each syllable on the spectrogram: from where it starts to where it ends, and from its lowest pitch to its highest. Then check your boxes against the answer. It takes about two minutes.
Nothing here identifies you: each visit gets a random code, and only your boxes and labels are kept.
Load a short recording (up to 20 seconds) of a bird near you, or record one with your phone's microphone. Here there is no answer key: your boxes are the measurement.
Liked it? Stay on contour! Get updates when the lab posts sound-processing jobs that need careful ears and hands: measuring songs, sorting recordings, checking each other's boxes. And we're starting a community where young and seasoned field ecologists meet, trade what they know, and go out listening together.
Tap any answers that fit. Skip anything you like. Your answers build a list at the bottom, and nothing is sent unless you choose to submit it. No names or contact details.
The spectrogram. Time runs left to right, pitch (frequency, in kilohertz) bottom to top, and darker means louder. A whistle is a flat line, a slur is a slanted one, a trill is a row of short dashes, a buzz is a thick smudge.
The practice birds. Their songs are built from notes, syllables and phrases the way real songbirds build theirs, and each sounds like a familiar North American bird. Because the computer made them, it knows exactly where every syllable is, so it can score your boxes: how many you found, how close your start times were, and how close your peak pitch was.
Why measure by hand? Automatic detectors still miss quiet, overlapping and unusual songs. Careful human boxes are how those detectors are trained and checked, and measurements from many people show how much measurers agree.