birdwhisper

Test your knowledge of bird songs in any region

Birdwhisper searches community science databases for lists of birds in a given region. It then makes it easy to download bird calls from that area and test yourself in identifying the species.

Installation

You can install the development version of birdwhisper from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("samherniman/birdwhisper")

Example

Turn on the package with:

library(birdwhisper)

Make a list of bird species by supplying a location. The location can be the name of the place, like "Vancouver, BC" or an {sf} object

spp_lst <- collect_species_list("Vancouver, BC")
#> Passing 1 address to the Nominatim single address geocoder
#> Query completed in: 1 seconds

head(spp_lst)
#> [1] "Turdus migratorius"    "Lophodytes cucullatus" "Phalacrocorax auritus"
#> [4] "Colaptes auratus"      "Branta canadensis"     "Junco hyemalis"

Use search_xeno_canto() to find recordings in Xeno Canto of each species in your species list. Then you can use download_recordings() to download a selection of them to your computer.

resps <- search_xeno_canto(spp_lst)
recs <- download_recordings(resps, save_directory = here::here())

test_me() will play each recording randomly and ask you to name the species you hear. Hopefully you will get better at naming each one over time.

test_me(recs)

At the moment, the tests are more like flashcards, where it just tells you the answer when you’re ready. Later, I’d like to add multiple choice tests and true/false tests.

I hope this package encourages people to get outside!

Code of Conduct

Please note that the birdwhisper project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.