Corkscrew Swamp bird calls are training AI to ID species by sound

NAPLES, Fla. (WINK)—The sounds of Southwest Florida's birds are now training artificial intelligence at Corkscrew Swamp, helping an app identify species by their unique calls.

Every chip, whistle, and bird call at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary could be helping train artificial intelligence. The Merlin Bird ID app uses thousands of recordings from Southwest Florida, including more than 5,500 from Collier County, to learn how to identify birds by sound.

The app doesn't just hear a bird—it actually sees its own unique sound wave on screen. Think of it like a fingerprint.

The AI learns those patterns, then matches them to thousands of recordings submitted by birders worldwide. Even birds of the same species can sound a little different depending on where they live.

Just like people have accents, apparently, birds do too.

"We use those recordings to literally teach Merlin how to identify those birds by sound," said Alli Smith, Merlin project coordinator.

"Merlin looks at the shapes in that spectrogram and tries to match them to the shapes in the sounds that we've trained it with to identify the birds by sound, so that's how Merlin uses AI to identify birds," Smith said.

"We want to make sure to capture all sorts of different vocal variations from different parts of the range, so it's exciting to have sound recordings from Southwest Florida," Smith said.

Cornell says the app's vocabulary is only growing, with plans to add more species from Southwest Florida and from around the world, especially in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia.