I've been birdspotting for the last year (in the UK, there is an addictive app called birdex, which is basically like a pokedex in the pokemon game, except it does birds). I am proud to report that I've observed 110 species this year. The last one was this weekend, where apparently meadow pipits are traveling across London parks while they're heading south.

It's not just regional dialects and individual birds, I am noticing that the time of the year also matters. Tits sound different in spring, summer and autumn, and so do e.g. robins.

It's a hobby I can recommend to everyone. Whenever I am outside now, I can listen for any faint sound and then make a mental note of all the birds I observed.

something I wondered for a while - do DOGS have accents?

is body language of indian dog the same as brazilian dog?

Wood pigeon s don't say "my toe bleeds Be-tty". They say "I know I'm pretty". That's according to Chris Packham so it's true.

We used yellowhammer dialects as one of the tasks in the OG paper on building 'custom' models for species classification on top of embeddings from bird song classifiers: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-49989-z

It was the hardest task (alongside godwit call types, bat species (pitch shifted into the audible range), Marine mammal species, and frog species), but still worked!

I really appreciate seeing more ethology stories on HN!

I didn't grow up near ravens but I'm sure I've encountered them in my life plenty of times, except now I'm traveling around Oregon/Washington forests and I can't tell you how many times I thought some drunk people were arguing or screaming in camp and it was just the ravens. Just the strangest screeching or whatever you want to call it.

Actually, thinking about this, I was in Moab for a year with ravens and never heard anything like what I hear in the PNW from them.

Also didn't know Stellar Jays were a thing until here, coolest looking bird I've seen. Like punk rock blue jays.

Gemini has been absolutely terrible as a "what bird? [bird pic]" tool. I wonder how many bird names I've "learned" wrong from it. It thinks a lot of what I send it are canada geese.

ofa coursa birds have-a accents!