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Warbler Quiz Game (try to beat my highscore!)


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2 minutes ago, The Bird Nuts said:

Well done @Avery!  Are you using headphones?  Do you think they would help?

I am using headphones, and nice mixing headphones at that. My last attempt I used my desktop studio monitors, though I think the only difference is the headphones helped me focus more on tone quality, since the headphones help block out outside sounds.

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Well... That didn't take long. Very impressive, @Avery! Try as I might, I can't get over 81%. I'm up to 500+ guesses at this point. I've lost a lot of my perfect 100s, just because sometimes my mind blanks/spelling error OR if you listen to enough you find a bird singing a really weird song.

Here's my current chart.

1368957539_ScreenShot2021-03-15at10_48_08PM.thumb.png.a771371176ac601f02c10ac6c396c082.png

I can't wait to add more quizzes. I think I might work on a Western one tonight.

Edited by Hasan
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7 hours ago, Hasan said:

Well... That didn't take long. Very impressive, @Avery! Try as I might, I can't get over 81%. I'm up to 500+ guesses at this point. I've lost a lot of my perfect 100s, just because sometimes my mind blanks/spelling error OR if you listen to enough you find a bird singing a really weird song.

Here's my current chart.

1368957539_ScreenShot2021-03-15at10_48_08PM.thumb.png.a771371176ac601f02c10ac6c396c082.png

I can't wait to add more quizzes. I think I might work on a Western one tonight.

Yeah, there are some weird songs! This kind of site is perfect for ear training!

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13 minutes ago, The Bird Nuts said:

I just did a run of 500 and got 77%.  I'm getting better!  I still have trouble with Wilson's/Nashville, Hooded/Magnolia, and, of course, Bay-breasted...

Interesting. Wilson's and Nashville sound nothing alike to me. I struggle with Blue/Golden-winged, Pine, and Chestnut-sided/Yellow, along with many others.

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1 minute ago, The Bird Nuts said:

Huh, maybe you could give me some tips?  Both have a two-part song, right?

The eastern subspecies of WIWA give a two part song, while the western songs contain a single part. They both have the same tone to it. I think of Wilson's as single notes slowly getting quicker, even though they don't pick up much speed. I feel like once you figure out the tone of WIWA it 's pretty easy. Here's a western song from my house:

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/219195241#_ga=2.49069796.379575720.1614479523-590164031.1614479523

Nashville Warbler have two part songs. At least for the western ones, the first part of the song seems a little bit like Yellow Warbler, with each note deciding from high to low, while the second part of the song is stable.

 

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 A couple of tips:

Blue-winged vs Golden-winged: the second syllable of Blue-winged is generally much fatter- almost fart-like. Classic Blue-winged is a two-syllable song, though it can sometimes have more. Classic Golden-winged has upwards of three syllables after the initial syllable, and is not so thick or 'fat' in quality. I've also found Golden-winged is on average more variable and can sing weird songs, though I wonder how much of that is due to hybridization and backcrossing.

Hooded vs Magnolia: Hooded has a slightly richer/deeper tone and is typically a tad slower than Magnolia, which is a bit higher and more hurried.

Nashville vs Wilson's: Nashville is high pitched and strongly two-parted (with the first part often sounding sqeaky-wheelish, and the second are fast 'chups'), where Wilson's is just a string of random 'chups'. The quality of Wilson's can be close to Hooded or Connecticut.

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I am having trouble with some of the more southeast warblers, like Yellow-throated Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, etc. I've never lived in the southeast, so those are tougher for me. 

Also finding that some Palm Warbler vocalizations can be similar to some Worm-eating Warbler vocalizations!

On songs that I don't know, I find myself listening to the birds in the background to help me. If you hear stuff like Tufted Titmouse and Red-bellied Woodpecker, you know its farther south. But if you're hearing stuff like White-throated Sparrows, Alder Flycatchers, or Olive-sided Flycatchers in the background, you know its farther north. 

There are also a few environmental clues other than the background birds. For example, in a couple of the Louisiana Waterthrush songs, I could hear running water in the background!

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So.... Here's the empid quiz. It is over ALL NA empids (except for Buff-breasted Flycatcher). So Acadian, Alder, Cordilleran, Dusky, Hammond's, Gray, Least, Pacific-slope, and Willow. I'm at 45%. It's pretty obvious, I don't know western empids. Who is gonna claim the throne in this one?

http://benguofilms.com/empids.php

It was a little hacky putting this together- I'm going to be improving my workflow in the coming week. It's a bunch of backend stuff so hopefully it won't be noticeable or cause any problems, but once I've situated that correctly it will be much easier to pump out more quizzes.

Edited by Hasan
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I needed to work on my empids, so this is really helpful! My patch is the best place in the county for five western empids, and all them except Pacific-slope and Willow hit the filter despite them being regular in my patch. 

I'm really struggling between Hammond's and Dusky, anyone have any tips?

Edited by Aidan B
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3 minutes ago, Aidan B said:

I needed to work on my empids, so this is really helpful! My patch is the best place in the county for empids, and all but Pacific-slope and Willow hit the filter despite them being regular in my patch. 

I'm really struggling between Hammond's and Dusky, anyone have any tips?

Hammond's are higher pitched usually. My biggest problem is spelling everything correctly.

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Don't know if anyone cares but the website is currently down for maintenance. I'm working on getting my databases working (removing all the stupid hacky stuff I did hahaha). Also, specifically for @The Bird Nuts, I noticed that you had a bunch of duplicate 'BirdNut1' accounts, if you will. I combined all of them, but I did not know which one you are currently using. Once the website is up and running, if you lose your score, just post on this thread or shoot me a PM and I'll fix it.

Some features that are on my horizon:

- More quizzes! My next targets are shorebirds, thrushes, vireos, Robin-like songs (tanagers, grosbeaks, etc.)

- Better leaderboards linked across quizzes so we can see rankings overall!

- Data about commonly missed species

- Instructional materials

- Redesign?

As always, any suggestions on what you guys want to see are appreciated! 

Just a fun aside because this is probably like wayyyy far off but it could be fun to do some machine learning to try to separate very similar species by sound or photo. Think merlin but more specific, like an AI to separate Alder/Willow Flycatcher or for NFC calls. I have some experience with neural nets but I'm crazy busy right now.

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