Nature guides on iPhone are changing the field
An article in the Yorkshire Post caught my eye this morning. (That’s a puffin on the right, by the way.)
Field guides such as the British Birds Video Guide and Butterflies of Britain and Ireland have only recently appeared on the App Store—possibly because they involve a tremendous of number of image, audio, and video files—but they’re already making such an attractive alternative to the traditional printed guides that nature watchers are altering long-held habits: where previously they would make notes before consulting the guide, nature lovers are now using their iPhone apps to make an identification while the unfamiliar birds and butterflies are still in sight.
The audio and video are what’s different:
I loaded them on to my iPhone and took them for a test drive. My first destination was the fringe of some woodland on Rombalds Moor, between Airedale and Wharfedale, where I expected to find two oft-confused species side-by-side.
Meadow Pipits and Tree Pipits are easy to tell apart if you hear them singing or calling regularly, but identifying them by sight is more problematic.
With a bird in view, my phone soon told me I was looking at a Tree Pipit. The close-up video showed it had fine streaks on its flanks and for confirmation I compared it with video footage of the Meadow Pipit. So much easier than colour plates in a bird book.— Latest mobile phone technology gives birdwatchers a flying start
, Yorkshire Post, May 8, 2009
It’s interesting to see iPhone affecting something so seemingly distant as nature-watching in Britain, a pastime with strong discipline…
So would I break the habit of a lifetime and start checking unfamiliar birds and butterflies while I’m seeing them, or continue to make notes? I’ll probably do both. If it’s on my phone, the instant identification guides will often be hard to resist.
…and it becomes even more interesting with a timely article in the New York Times this morning which reports that researchers have created an iPhone app to identify trees automatically by the shape of their leaves alone:
THE traditional way to identify an unfamiliar tree is to pull out a field guide and search its pages for a matching description. One day people may pull out a smartphone instead, photographing a leaf from the mystery tree and then having the phone search for matching images in a database.
A team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation has created just such a device — a hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves, said Peter N. Belhumeur, a professor of computer science at Columbia and a member of the team.— Digital Field Guides Eliminate the Guesswork, New York Times, May 9, 2009
Consider what makes apps like these possible:
Mobility. When people say “the best designs are invisible”, they mean that the tool fits the task so well, you focus on the task instead of the tool. Field guides are used in the field. Laptops may be portable, but they’re not mobile; you might carry one to an observation hide, but you would hardly hold it up, eye-level, while looking at a bird in the distance. Similarly, to identify trees by their leaves, you need to take a photo of the leaf. With iPhone, you just aim and shoot.
Great media support. Field guides are really identification guides. Traditional printed field guides are restricted to text and images, but nature also moves and makes sounds. Great support for video and audio make it possible to identify subjects with greater confidence.
Easy to use. iPhone’s design is fundamental to these apps. Because the apps are easy to launch and use, they are used.
Powerful processor/Connectivity. The iPhone may not match desktop machines for speed, but it’s no slouch either. And there’s always the option to connect and process data remotely. Either way, you can leverage sizable databases:
The computer matching is done using images of recently acquired leaves, Dr. Belhumeur said, typically 20 leaves from each species, but sometimes more, that are in the image library. For Plummers Island, the team collected 5,013 leaves representing 157 species; for the trees of Central Park, it collected 4,320 leaves representing 144 species, said Dr. White of Columbia.— Digital Field Guides Eliminate the Guesswork, New York Times, May 9, 2009
Birds, butterflies, and trees for now, but who know what else will emerge? Vast data and processing power in your hand with always-on connectivity—exciting!
iBird Explorer PRO has changed the way we go birding. We now have quick access to images of juveniles, similar birds, and audio of the calls of the birds.
This doesn’t detract from the field experience at all and makes the educational aspect much easier for ourselves and newer birders. Rather than trying to describe the difference between the calls of a Hairy Woodpecker and a Downy Woodpecker, you can quickly play the audio samples.
Also great when you’re not in the field and want to discuss birding.
Another consideration for conservation efforts would be the addition of GPS to track where the bird/tree/endangered species was spotted and auto uploaded to a conservation database so that changes can be noted in close to real time, by agencies interested in determining changes in range/population with climate change or other human impact.