The eBird Taiwan portal has documented about 1.4 million bird sightings since it was launched 10 years ago, making it the seventh-biggest contribution to such records worldwide, the Ministry of Agriculture’s Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute said.
Collecting and compiling bird-watching data is such a massive undertaking that local ornithologists mobilized citizen scientists when the Taiwan Breeding Bird Survey project was implemented in 2009, institute researcher Lin Ruey-shing (林瑞興) said last week.
More than 1.4 million sightings of 679 bird species were uploaded to eBird Taiwan by more than 10,500 bird-watchers since the platform was launched in August 2015, Lin said.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute via CNA
The eBird portal is not only a database, but a powerful system that incorporates the “Merlin” app, which helps beginners learn about birds, he said.
Merlin was localized into traditional Chinese in 2020 and has had about 8,000 users since then, Lin said.
It can be downloaded for free, and its artificial intelligence-powered system enables users to identify bird species via images and sounds, he said.
Users can also use the app to record bird images, sounds or videos, and upload the information to eBird Taiwan simultaneously, he added.
The app’s automatic bird sound recognition was developed with assistance from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) as part of its “Eco Plus Ecological Harmony Program,” Lin said.
As part of the program, TSMC is also helping eBird Taiwan compile the Taiwan Bird Atlas, which is expected to be 90 percent completed by 2028, and would include bird habitat information and behavior observations, he said.
The Taiwan Wild Bird Federation digitalized the bird-watching data it has been collecting since the 1970s and uploaded them to eBird Taiwan, boosting the portal’s significance, Lin said.
Combined with data uploaded by members of the public, eBird Taiwan’s biodiversity data account for about 60 percent of all biodiversity data in the nation, he said.
Such a large amount of data would not only facilitate bird research and conservation, but also raise global visibility of local birds and attract more overseas bird-watchers to Taiwan, he added.
Wild Bird Society of Taipei president Chang Jui-lin (張瑞麟) said the federation has been collaborating with the institute for decades.
Aside from data collection and compilation, the federation is also dedicated to training member of the public on using eBird Taiwan and Merlin, with many online or physical lectures and training programs held to help boost local bird study capacity, he said.
Taiwan is a shining beacon in bird-watching, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology director Ian Owens said.
“Again and again, eBird Taiwan has been a pioneer [in] applying new technology to understand nature,” Owens said.
“That remains true today with this artificial intelligence technology to automatically find new species... This is a fundamental change in bird-watching and how we monitor biodiversity,” he added.
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