If I could compare using the Wildlife Acoustics program Kaleidoscope to anything, it would be sort of like learning to use a computer for the first time. It is challenging at first, with different buttons, colors, and gadgets. I had to constantly refer back to the instructions until suddenly it clicked!
The journey to learning Kaleidoscope was not exactly a walk in the park, although at times (most of the time) it was quite fun! First, as we’ve already shared on this blog, we had to learn to identify bird by their songs. It was a matter of practicing every day and simply acknowledging the bird songs that we heard on a daily basis. Once you become conscious of all the types of songs, it becomes easier to begin to identify the bird. My routine to become adept at identifying birds was to take a walk through nature (often with my smartphone and a variety of handy bird ID apps) and test myself to see if I could listen to a bird and tell what it was by only hearing the song. In the drop of a hat, I was able to identify birds by just their songs.
Next, set up the acoustic monitoring system! This is when you put your explorer hat on and head out into the field. We set up four acoustic monitoring units (Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter SM4 Acoustic Recorders) along a transect line in Wild Basin that went from high urbanization to low urbanization. We placed the units in similar habitat types, away from anthropogenic activity along the trails, and at similar heights. We especially tried to put them in areas where the golden-cheeked warbler (an endangered songbird species) might reside. We also set up the schedules on the units to record for an hour in the early morning and an hour at night. At the end of each week, we would go into the field to retrieve the memory card from each unit and replace it with a new one. We took the full memory cards back to the lab because they were ready to be analyzed using the Kaleidoscope sound analysis program.
The Kaleidoscope program itself works by grouping the similar bird songs into clusters where we would then identify them. Sometimes up to thirty different songs belonged to the same cluster. We would identify the clusters as Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Carolina Wren, etc. Later, the program can use these identified clusters to help identify new recordings that come in. Over the long term, this data could potentially tell us which birds reside where, the environment that certain types of birds prefer, and the role urbanization plays in affecting bird communities.
I am about to graduate from St. Edward’s University, so my internship is now drawing to a close. This has been an amazing experience, being able to go through the process of setting up the acoustic bird monitoring systems, understanding how to use it, learning to identify bird songs, and applying it to the Kaleidoscope program. This research will open doors to many more projects, and answer questions to many bird enigmas. It has been fun and a real privilege to be part of this team and research experience!