Shazam For Birdsong Is Coming

Shazam was a genius solution for the perennial problem of hearing a song and wanting to know what it was.

Now the days of walking through a forest, desperately wondering whether what you're hearing is a starling or a chaffinch, are soon to be over, with the launch of Warblr: the birdsong recognition app.

It will analyse bird sounds in real time, and aims to identify the species accordingly. However, it's a more complicated beast than its pop song equivalent as, clearly, birds in the wild do not all chirp exactly the same tune every time. Nonetheless, the patterns remain fairly consistent, enabling some clever software to work its magic. It is also hoped that it will aid conservation studies, as users share information on the birds they've 'tagged' with a central database.

The app is currently at Kickstarter stage with nearly £10,000 of its £50,000 goal raised. It's been financed this far by a grant from Queen Mary University London and its two creators, Dan Stowell and Florence Wilkinson aim to have it finished by the start of next year at the latest.

So get off Twitter and on to twitching, and sign up for the Kickstarter campaign here.

(Images: Warblr/Shutterstock)