#613: Merlin app helping conservation efforts

I've mentioned the Merlin ID app before on the blog. It will be a very useful resource for all those teaching the GCSE Natural History.

The Guardian had an article this weekend on the value of the app for identifying species which are threatened.

#463: Wildling App - launches today

The OCR blog has a post from Ant Rawlins.

He talks about the new Wildling app which launches today.

Wildling officially launches nationwide on 9 July, backed by some of the UK’s leading conservation organisations and individuals, including the RSPB, the Marine Conservation Society, Forestry England, and advisors such as Deborah Meaden, Ben Goldsmith, and Sir Tim Smit.

It’s a free app designed to make finding and enjoying nature simpler for everyone. Whether you’re in a city, suburb, or rural area, Wildling helps users discover local nature, explore ideas for getting outdoors, and find calming, inspiring content that can develop confidence and connection with the natural world.

It’s suitable for families, first-timers, educators, and anyone looking to reconnect with nature, and feel better for doing so.

You can download the Wildling app for free from our website.

Wildling has been designed to make it easier for people to engage with the natural world, and that has clear value across many areas of education.

By helping students explore nature where they live, the app can support learning across a wide range of subjects. It’s not about replacing lessons, but enhancing them with real-world experience.

This joins apps such as Melissa Harrison's Encounter app in providing people with a chance to identify and record their encounters with nature, which will be useful for geography as well as for the GCSE Natural History when and if it finally gains approval to be added as a new qualification option.

Thanks to Kerry Sage for the tipoff to the blog post and app.

#435: Apps for plant identification

There are two key apps for those who want to identify plants. I've already mentioned iNaturalist, but I've also had a play with the PlantNet app.

This is free to download for iPhone and Android.

I tried it in the gardens of the building where my classroom is located. The app was good at letting me know what plant I was looking at.

#411: Encounter app - now available to download

I've been following the progress on Melissa Harrison's nature recording app since it was first announced. I was one of the beta testers of the app when it came out a month or so ago, and was excited at the features it offers and the ease of use and the opportunity to record encounters with nature easily, sitting alongside some of the other apps I have on my phone such as MerlinID to identify birdsong.

The app is now available to download, free of charge from the various app stores. This is a soft launch for the app. There is more to come, but any use you can make of the app will help generate data.

It is called Encounter (Nature).

It is a useful companion piece to her recent book 'Homecoming'.

As Melissa said in a recent email to those involved in the testing:

It’s not perfect. We still need to build the search function (weirdly, far more complicated – and expensive – than you’d think); there are some UX (user experience) niggles I am itching to improve; we need to build relationships with nature charities and environmental NGOs so that we can feature their content; and it’ll take a while until the nature tips and information it contains can be properly targeted to users by location: we need to wait for good numbers of people to tag the things they see before we can start turning that data into useful content. But I think we’ve made a really good start, and I hope you’ll stick with us as the app grows and improves, bit by bit.

This is Encounter’s ‘soft launch’. We hope to build our user base over the winter, ahead of its formal launch in April. That’s when we’ll be trying to get press coverage: when Christmas is over, spring is happening, and people are going outdoors again. I’d be very grateful for any help with that when the time comes.

For now, please download the app, play around with it and most of all, enjoy using it: that’s what it’s for! 

I built it to help people notice nature, and to get into the habit of jotting down the things they encounter. The benefits that flow from that simple habit are hard to overestimate: both to us, as humans, and to the natural world itself.

#377: iNaturalist

A list of suggested apps from The Guardian. 

There are going to be quite a few of these which will be of interest to those teaching GCSE Natural History and we will be producing a list of apps: one for Android and one for iPhone.

We’re a big fan of @inaturalist at @skernlodge!

🍃🌼🦀🐚🐝🪲🌳https://t.co/GEH1wqVIJx

— Tom Humphreys (@Harrumphreys) October 27, 2023

One of the apps is called iNaturalist. 

It seems to work well - why not give it a go... 

#353: Seek App

The Seek App was mentioned by Alastair Humphreys in his recent book 'Home' where he explores his local area for a year, rather than looking to go further afield. 

Ordnance Survey sell customised OS maps for areas as well - centred on a particular place - I have one for our own home which I won in a competition, and also one for the geography department centred on the school.

Seek is an app which allows you to learn about the nature all around you. Available for iOS and Android.

This is worth a look for those who are starting to think about preparing for some fieldwork as well, perhaps around the GA's National Fieldwork Festival next year - it's never too early to start planning fieldwork. 

#304: MerlinID for bird identification

Merlin ID is a rather good new free smartphone app which is ideal for anyone who wants to know what birds they are listening to. Download the app to begin with.

When you are out on a walk, choose SOUND ID and press the green button.

Merlin identifies bird sounds using breakthroughs in machine learning technology to recognize species based on spectrograms—visual representations of sounds. For Merlin to learn to recognize a species by sound, we use audio recordings from the Macaulay Library that include a variety of sounds for each species to “train” Merlin.

Your smartphone's microphone will be used to record sounds in real time, and as the software identifies a match with a bird that is singing, it will appear on the screen, and you can compare the suggestion with what you are hearing.

Here's what it picked up on a walk I took yesterday's evening. 

As the bird's name popped up I heard it's call as separate from the others, which helped me potentially learn it in the future.

Each sound file can be uploaded to help Merlin ID 'learn'.

As the main website says:

Sound ID is currently available for 1,000+ species. You can view a list of all species covered by Sound ID here. Sound ID will be expanded in the future to include species worldwide, but to do that, our team needs a minimum of 150 sound recordings for each species to train Merlin to recognize their sounds. You can help us add new species to Merlin by recording the birds in your area and uploading them with your eBird checklists.

This will be a wonderful app for those who are planning to investigate bird habitats and particular species.

It's currently FREE but I wonder whether there are plans to start charging over time as the app gets more accurate.

#272: Mammal Mapper

The Mammal Mapper website is produced by the Mammal Society.

There are some useful videos to go alongside the app.

This would make a good opportunity to get involved in citizen science.

#83: Encounter Nature App - coming in 2024

I'm a great fan of Melissa Harrison's writing. I have a number of her books in my library and several of them will also be added to the suggested reading list for the course. Check out her fiction book "All Among the Barley" and her collection of nature pieces called 'The Stubborn Light of Things'. She has also channelled 'BB' with a pair of children's books based on the classic 'The Little Grey Men', who I have blogged about previously. I also have her book called 'Rain', capturing four walks. She has also produced a 4 volume series of seasonal almanacs.

She is now working on a new app which will be launching in Summer 2024.

You can sign up to the newsletter to find out more on the progress as it takes shape. 

It sounds like it will be a very useful app for students to have on their own devices, and perhaps keep a nature diary during the course to track their observations and experiences. I think that would be a really nice idea for engagement with the natural world.

Description: 

Person by person, street by street, we need to repair our connection to nature. Encounter is a guided nature journal from nature writer Melissa Harrison that will open your eyes to the wild world around you, whether you live in the heart of a city or the deepest countryside. Full of seasonal prompts, tips and ideas, it will help you turn photos, notes and audio into a rich, meaningful and lifelong relationship with the natural world.